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Courtesy LifetimeThe Lifetime docuseries Surviving R. Kelly, which aired in January 2019, is credited as a catalyst for the numerous federal and state criminal sex abuse charges filed against R. Kelly himself. The executive producers say didn’t plan on a part two at the time — until they discovered there were alleged victims who were being ignored.
“At some point, a reporter shared a conversation that they had had with authorities where clear evidence of tapes and pictures of sexual abuse of minors had been obtained and those charges were dropped,” co-executive producer Brie Miranda Bryant tells The Hollywood Reporter. “The reporter wanted to know why. And the answer the reporter got from those authorities was, ‘They’re not our girls.’”
“I remember that conversation vividly and that really became our mission statement for part two; we felt like we had a sense of responsibility now,” Bryant’s producing partner, Jesse Daniels, adds. ”We knew that we had to go deeper into some areas we couldn’t before with part one and so that became our mission.”
In Surviving R. Kelly, which was nominated for an Emmy, 50 accusers and participants wanting to be involved. That number grew to more than 70 for Part II. Seven survivors went on the record in the first series, while 10 speak in Part II.
The new series follows the several court cases against Kelly, and also examines how survivors and participants in part one have coped with the backlash they’ve endured since
Surviving R. Kelly Part II: The Reckoning debuts Thursday night at 9 p.m. ET on Lifetime, and continues Friday and Saturday.
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