Kelly Rowland was the subject of Internet chatter after she was observed getting into it with an usher at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The singer and actress has since made a public statement after the incident, stating that she was standing her ground.
The image of Kelly Rowland pointing and having what appeared to be a loud discussion with the Cannes Film Festival usher went viral this week and even sparked some meme fodder. It wasn’t understood at the time what happened but Rowland, speaking with the Associated Press, explained her side of events and even alleged that women [i.e. not Black] who didn’t look like her were not treated the same.
“The woman knows what happened. I know what happened. I have a boundary and I stand by those boundaries and that is it,” Kelly Rowland said to the AP at the Cannes Film Festival. “And there were other women that attended that carpet who did not quite look like me and they didn’t get scolded or pushed off or told to get off. I stood my ground and she felt like she had to stand hers. But I stood my ground.”
From what was seen on video footage, Rowland was instructed twice by an usher to vacate the red carpet section at the Palais des Festivals and motioned her to take the stairs into the theater. Then a group of ushers swarmed her and essentially guided her to the stairs. At that moment, Rowland gave one of the ushers a piece of her mind.
Rowland observed a difference in treatment but stopped short of calling it race-related but the suggestion rings clear in her statment.
The video of Kelly Rowland’s comments can be viewed below.
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Photo: Getty