Now Playing
Telepictures Productions Inc./Warner Bros. EntertainmentPharrell Williams stopped by The Ellen DeGeneres Show Thursday to both promote his new film, Hidden Figures, and perform.
During the show, the celebrated artist also sat down with DeGeneres to talk about the controversy over Kim Burrell‘s anti-gay statements made during a church sermon last week.
Ellen introduced the topic, explaining her reason for cancelling Burell’s appearance on Thursday’s show. Kim was supposed to perform the song “I See a Victory” with Pharrell.
“You were supposed to do a different song, and you were supposed to perform it with a singer…I actually didn’t know her. Her name is Kim Burrell and she made a statement,” Ellen began.
“She was doing a Facebook Live and she said some very not nice things about homosexuals. So I didn’t feel like that was good of me to have her on the show, to give her a platform after she’s saying things about me,” she added.
Pharrell told Ellen, “There’s no room for any kind of prejudice in 2017 and moving on. She’s a fantastic singer… I love her, just like I love everybody else and we all gotta get used to that. We all have to get used to everyone’s differences and understand that this is a big, gigantic, beautiful, colorful world. And it only works with inclusion and empathy.”
“Whenever you hear some sort of hate speech and you feel like it doesn’t necessarily pertain to you because you may not have anything to do with that, all you gotta do is put the word ‘black’ in that sentence. Or put ‘gay’ in that sentence, or put ‘transgender’ in that sentence. Or put ‘white’ in that sentence. And all of a sudden it starts to make sense to you,” he added.
Copyright © 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
