He said, she said: A recap of Chris Brown/Rihanna's interviews with MTV and 20/20

November 7, 1:09 AMR&B Music ExaminerSamantha Greaves

Previous Next

1 comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the R&B Music Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Rihanna with Diane Sawyer on 20/20. (Photo: ABC)

The most controversial event of the year took its place in the spotlight on Friday (11.06) with Chris Brown and Rihanna sitting down for interviews to discuss what took place during the early morning hours of February 8th. As you know, Chris Brown has been no stranger to taking part in interviews since the incident – one being with Larry King, another with New York radio host Angie Martinez, and now an interview with MTV’s Sway.

Rihanna on the other hand has remained quiet about the events that transpired, opting to keep her side of the story to herself; that of course is until now.

It seems like after a clip of Rihanna’s interview on 20/20 was released online showing the singer opening up about what took place the night before the Grammy’s, Chris Brown decided to give his impromptu side of the story to MTV. Coincidentally enough, the interview was scheduled to air on the music network just 4 hours before Rihanna’s interview on 20/20.

In Chris’s 30-minute interview with Sway, the singer appeared much more comfortable and articulate as opposed to his appearance on Larry King Live. During the interview, Chris was presented with questions such as how he has been dealing with the negative reaction from fans, what caused him to react the way that he did with Rihanna, and of course the obvious what took place that night. Even in his third interview about the event involving Rihanna, the singer choose to side-step the question about what happened that night saying that out of respect for Rihanna he did not want to discuss what took place; he did, however, state that anger was the driving motive behind what triggered him to hit Rihanna.

He hardly – if ever – addressed Rihanna by her name often times referring to the singer as “her” and when asked if he missed her, Chris lovingly smiled to himself. As for Chris tweeting loving videos of him and Rihanna and pictures of him completing his community labor hours, the singer stated that he did it to own up to his actions. He did not want to be ashamed of his mistakes and wanted it to be an example for individuals who are involved in abusive relationships, putting on full display one of the end results if they continue down that destructive path.

Though Chris is heckled by people who refer to him as a woman beater when the singer is out in public, Chris says that he understands why people feel the way that they do and all he can do is accept it, learn from it, and grow from the situation. He assures that he is enrolled in domestic violence classes and enjoys being able to learn about anger and how to control it. He also stated that he would never hit a woman again.

Watch Chris Brown’s MTV interview [Full].

Rihanna’s 20/20 interview with Diane Sawyer was much different from Chris’s, a lot more in-depth even. The singer not only went into detail about what happened that night, she also took viewers down a mental path of how she felt before, during, and after the event. In her 20/20 interview Rihanna said that Chris was her first big love. Calling Chris her best friend, Rihanna said that they fell in love thanks to their close friendship but the more they fell in love the more dangerous they became for each other.
 

Chris Brown. (Photo: Google)

When asked about her thoughts in regards to the leaked photo of her bruised and battered taken just moments after the event, she said that she was embarrassed and that every time she sees it she thinks about what happened to her that night. The fight, according to Rihanna, stemmed from a text message Chris received while the two were together.

She explained that she got upset over it and started to question Chris about it. She was angry with the fact that he was lying to her, and he was angry that she wouldn’t leave the situation alone. She described Chris as not having any soul in his eyes when he was beating her.

The singer described her mindset during the brawl stating that she wondered when it would stop. She then said after it was all said and done, she didn’t know what to do as she stood in the middle of the road (after Chris had taken off) in her gown with a bloody and swollen face.

A popular discussion that has tailed this situation has been that Chris may have hit her because she hit him first. During the telecast, they aired short snippets of You Tube videos showing fans expressing their opinions about the situation, saying that she must have provoked him. Rihanna’s response to that was that it was just ignorance for people to think that. She then went on to ask, if she hit him does it make it right that he hit her back?

Rihanna also went into detail about her childhood that involved growing up in an abusive household. The singer recounted how her father would beat her mother, in one case resulting in her father once breaking her mother’s nose.

When Diane asked her why she went back to Chris Brown after the event, Rihanna said that she wanted to protect him. She felt that he had never experienced this caliber of controversy during his time as a performer and she wanted to be there for him. She admitted that once she left Miami – the place where she and Chris were reconciling – she decided to end things with Chris due to the fact that she started to resent him.

When Diane played Chris’s personal apology video, Rihanna did not seem impressed; in fact, she stated that she believed he was reading off of a teleprompter implying that it was not sincere. Through it all and with all of her feelings, Rihanna said that she felt that the stay-away order set-up by the judge who presided over she and Chris’s case was unnecessary because it makes the situation uncomfortable for the two when they attend events or other industry functions.

When asked if she and Chris would ever get back together she said that she couldn’t answer that question because “love doesn’t just go away.”

“It happened to me and it can happen to anybody”, the singer said at the conclusion of the interview later saying that “love is blind”.

Watch Rihanna's 20/20 interview [Full]

Getting the whole story was definitely an eye opener and a far cry from what other media outlets were reporting. According to them, Rihanna’s interview on 20/20 would yield very little answers; it instead gave a lot more information and background than most expected.

Chris Brown and Rihanna during happy times. (Photo: Google)

It was a little disappointing to see that Chris, still after his third interview about the situation, refused to speak in detail about what took place; then again, surely there is reason behind why he is choosing to keep it to himself.

Though Rihanna’s interview did the job of shedding a lot of light on the situation, it was hard to ignore the fact that Diane Sawyer seemed to be guiding and controlling the interview.

For one, when she asked Rihanna about that night, instead of her allowing Rihanna to give a word-for-word recount of what happened, she opted to read off of a police report the singer herself gave. And even in the aforementioned police report, Rihanna later denied ever being choked unconscious. The singer even went on to deny another police report that documented an incident that took place between she and Chris before February 8th.

This life altering event could have been used by ABC not only to highlight who the victim and the attacker were, but it could have served as a lesson for other young adults who are both abusers and the one’s being abused; it is important to keep in mind that even though Chris Brown and Rihanna are mega stars, they are still young individuals who have yet to experience what life really is.

There are clearly issues that both Rihanna and Chris went through, some stemming from their childhoods; a fact that was made crystal clear when they discussed growing up in abusive households. The fact that the interview played sides was a little frustrating seeing that Rihanna and Chris’s situation could have been the perfect blueprint for laying out an all too common situation that many young adults are involved in and who obviously need guidance.

At any rate, both interviews were well worth the hype. Though many are crediting the release of Rihanna and Chris’s albums as the reasons why they sat down to give their sides of the stories, it still is admirable that they have decided to deal with their controversial event publicly so that other young adults can take away a life lesson that isn’t taught in school.

If you are involved in an abusive relationship or know of someone who is, please contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1800.799.SAFE (7233) or visit their site at www.ndvh.org.