Megan Thee Stallion gives Gayle King first interview about Tory Lanez
Megan Thee Stallion is finally ready to talk about Tory Lanez allegedly shooting her in 2020.
The Grammy-winning rapper, 27, sat down with CBS’ Gayle King for her first TV interview about the incident. In a clip released Sunday ahead of the full interview airing Monday on “CBS Mornings,” Megan Thee Stallion (real name: Megan Pete) shared a tearful recollection of what happened.
Lanez, whose legal name is Daystar Peterson, was charged in 2020 with shooting Megan Thee Stallion in the feet outside of a party in Hollywood Hills that July. The felony assault case is ongoing, and he was briefly jailed earlier this month after a judge said he had violated a protective order.
The incident began as an “argument because I was ready to go and everybody else wasn’t ready to go,” Megan Thee Stallion told King. “But that’s like normal friend stuff. We fuss about silly stuff all the time.”
Speaking through tears, she said: “But I never put my hands on anybody, I never raised my voice too loud. Like, this was one of them times where it was like – it shouldn’t have got this crazy.”
Previous story:Tory Lanez handcuffed in court for violating protective order in Megan Thee Stallion assault case
The rapper said she got out of the car and “everything (happened) so fast”: She suddenly heard a man screaming “dance,” followed by an expletive directed toward her.
“And then he started shooting. And I’m just like, ‘Oh, my God,’ ” she recalled. “He shot a couple of times. I was so scared. … I didn’t even want to move. I didn’t want to move too quick. I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, if I take a wrong step, I don’t know if he can shoot something that’s super-important. I don’t know if he could shoot me and kill me.’ ”
King asked Megan Thee Stallion if she was “afraid for your life at that time.”
“I was really scared, because I had never been shot at before,” she replied, choking up.
“CBS Mornings” airs weekdays from 7 to 9 a.m. ET.
Following months of speculation and publicity surrounding the incident, Lanez was charged in October 2020. At first, Los Angeles police reported the incident only as shots fired, a woman with foot injuries, and a man arrested on a weapons allegation.
But Megan Thee Stallion revealed a few days later that her foot injuries came from gunshots, and more than a month after the incident, she said in an Instagram video that it was Lanez who fired them. She slowly revealed more via social media in subsequent weeks.
Related:Megan Thee Stallion writes op-ed on protecting Black women ahead of Tory Lanez court hearing
“The way people have publicly questioned and debated whether I played a role in my own violent assault proves that my fears about discussing what happened were, unfortunately, warranted,” she wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times.
The day after he was charged, Lanez tweeted “the truth will come to the light” and “a charge is not a conviction.”
Lanez will next be in court for a June hearing before the scheduled September trial. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of roughly 23 years.
Contributing: Edward Segarra, USA TODAY, and The Associated Press