Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, this is part two of our episode about
Speaker 1: Robin Gibbons. If you haven't listened to part one yet,
Speaker 1: I recommend starting there. Just a note that we discuss
Speaker 1: sexual and domestic violence in this episode. It's September thirtieth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight, and Robin Gibbons, a well known actress,
Speaker 1: is revealing on a national television interview.
Speaker 2: He's got a side to him that's scary. That she
Speaker 2: is tormented by her husband's physical.
Speaker 3: Abuse and just recently, I've become afraid, I mean very
Speaker 3: very much afraid.
Speaker 1: Her husband, the heavyweight boxing champion of the world, Mike Tyson,
Speaker 1: is sitting beside her quietly, Why.
Speaker 4: Are you doing this interview? What you wanted people to know?
Speaker 2: I don't want him to seem like a bad guy.
Speaker 1: The couple is speaking to Barbara Walters to tackle a
Speaker 1: swirl of rumors around their marriage, but Robin's honesty in
Speaker 1: this moment is going to backfire and the public reaction
Speaker 1: to her intimate revelation will change the course of her life.
Speaker 5: Is Evana Kerm and I'm Jessica Bennett.
Speaker 1: And this is in Retrospect, where each week we revisit
Speaker 1: a cultural moment from the past that shaped us.
Speaker 5: And that we just can't stop thinking about today.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the vilification of Robin Gibbons, a talented
Speaker 1: actress who in the nineteen eighties became known for her
Speaker 1: violent marriage to Mike Tyson. But we're also talking about
Speaker 1: the way she was treated by the press, what it
Speaker 1: teaches us about domestic violence and the role race played
Speaker 1: in all of it.
Speaker 2: This is part two.
Speaker 6: So, Susie, we're talking about this remarkable interview which has
Speaker 6: now just aired. How does Robin feel about it after
Speaker 6: they finished taping.
Speaker 1: So initially, Mike and Robin and the people around them
Speaker 1: view the interview as a success.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Robin writes in her memoir, which is called Grace Will
Speaker 1: Lead Me Home that afterwards they all went out and
Speaker 1: celebrated and were really happy with the result.
Speaker 5: But then what was the public reaction to the interview?
Speaker 1: So the reaction is wild. Even in the run up
Speaker 1: to when they air it on September thirtieth, there's you know,
Speaker 1: a few days usually between an interview and when it
Speaker 1: actually gets edited together and put on television. During that period,
Speaker 1: ABC News leaks parts of the interview. I mean, I
Speaker 1: assume it was ABC news. I guess someone else could
Speaker 1: have done it.
Speaker 2: But purposely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's pre standard practice and television, right, you're gonna
Speaker 1: pre internet.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: They're releasing parts of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or they're not releasing the actual video of it,
Speaker 1: but they're letting people know that this is going to
Speaker 1: be a big interview worth watching, So they're leaking little
Speaker 1: pieces of what was covered, and the tabloids go crazy. Right,
Speaker 1: they're already following every twist and turn in this relationship,
Speaker 1: but at this point they're even more aggressively invested in
Speaker 1: kind of what comes next, and there's a lot of speculation,
Speaker 1: and I think the thing that becomes clear here is
Speaker 1: that the public opinion is really turning on her. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: there was already this idea that she was going to
Speaker 1: take all the spark out of Mike Tyson or whatever.
Speaker 5: The hell she was just in it for a month.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was already these sort of like spurious rumors
Speaker 2: about her.
Speaker 1: At this point, there is this sense that she's humiliated
Speaker 1: him with this interview, that by her saying that he's
Speaker 1: abusive while he's sitting there watching that that's a humiliation
Speaker 1: that's undeserved somehow. I mean, it's hard for me now
Speaker 1: looking back on it, to kind of understand this public sentiment.
Speaker 6: I mean I keep asking you, like, wait, what do
Speaker 6: you mean they think she's humiliated him? Like it is
Speaker 6: so crazy to watch this now and think to yourself, oh, god,
Speaker 6: she's really humiliated him. I mean, like, what you see
Speaker 6: here is an extremely raw description of a woman describing abuse. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and it's really wild that that was the public reaction
Speaker 6: to it, Like, it says so much about the time,
Speaker 6: and so actually I wanted to ask you, can you
Speaker 6: give us a little bit of context about our understanding
Speaker 6: of domestic violence at the time, because it was not
Speaker 6: what it is today.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting thing because a lot of the way
Speaker 1: we understand domestic violence now really started with stuff that
Speaker 1: happened in the nineteen eighties around this timeframe. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: wife beating as it was described was formally illegal in
Speaker 1: the United States by nineteen twenty, but you know, arrests
Speaker 1: remained very rare, and it wasn't until the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: where feminists started to really recast domestic violence as a
Speaker 1: major issue.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Actually, this was when MS magazine, which was run
Speaker 6: by Glorioustein and put domestic violence on its cover. It
Speaker 6: was the first magazine to do that. I randomly know
Speaker 6: a lot of this history. And it was an image,
Speaker 6: a full bleed image of a woman's face with a
Speaker 6: black eye. She was a famous model and so she
Speaker 6: was recognizable, and the headline was battered wives. And so
Speaker 6: this was exactly what you're saying. This was when the
Speaker 6: idea of abuse and domestic abuse was really starting to
Speaker 6: trickle out into the mainstream.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that cover really demonstrates this moment where a shift
Speaker 1: is occurring, almost in real time, where women are starting
Speaker 1: to say, like, these are real issues. There needs to
Speaker 1: be real legal repercussions for the language for it, language
Speaker 1: for it. But look, we're in eighty eight when we're
Speaker 1: talking about this. The Violence Against Woman Act isn't even
Speaker 1: passed until nineteen ninety four, and that is sort of
Speaker 1: the first act that acknowledges domestic violence and sexual assault
Speaker 1: as a crime and entrine's protection. So we're really at
Speaker 1: a very early understanding. And what you see is that
Speaker 1: Robin doesn't really benefit from that. Like it's not like
Speaker 1: we see all these feminists come forward to defend.
Speaker 5: Her right and support of her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I wanted to get the perspective of somebody
Speaker 1: who could put this into historical context for us, but
Speaker 1: also who lived through it.
Speaker 2: So I called up Salamisha Tillett.
Speaker 1: She's a Pulitzer Prize winning critic and a professor at Ruckers.
Speaker 1: She also grew up watching Robin Gibbons like I did
Speaker 1: on Head of the Class.
Speaker 2: Here's what she had to say.
Speaker 4: You know what's interesting about Robin Gibvens is that her
Speaker 4: public disclosure not only predates me too Right as like
Speaker 4: a global movement, but it predates other people coming forward
Speaker 4: with allegations against Mike Tyson, like Desiree Washington or other
Speaker 4: mainstream allegations of violence against women that we see later
Speaker 4: on In nineteen ninety one, the same year, Deserte Washington
Speaker 4: comes forward with allegations of sexual assault with Mike Tyson.
Speaker 4: In the fall of that year, Anita Hill comes forward
Speaker 4: with allegations of sexual harassment Clarence Thomas. So Robin Gibbons
Speaker 4: is in a way an island unto herself, but also
Speaker 4: she's like a canary in the coalmi. It's just really
Speaker 4: important for us to go back and kind of understand,
Speaker 4: like what was the discourse around violence against women, violence
Speaker 4: against black women in the eighties and early nineties, and
Speaker 4: then how did that language that the public narratives impact
Speaker 4: little girls like me and you were watching it.
Speaker 1: For those of you who don't know the story about
Speaker 1: Desiree Washington, we'll talk more about that later. But Salamisia
Speaker 1: is making such an important larger point here because what
Speaker 1: happens between Robin and Mike Tyson tells us a lot
Speaker 1: about how violence against women is seen in this era,
Speaker 1: and it tells us a lot about how racism is
Speaker 1: part of that conversation.
Speaker 6: Right, and not only in how Robin was treated, but
Speaker 6: in that whole sort of like beauty in the beast
Speaker 6: portrayal of the two of them, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And actually Salami Siha talked about that, you.
Speaker 4: Know, Mike Tyson was to call him like beasts to
Speaker 4: the beauty. He's already castigated as someone who's like not
Speaker 4: fully human. So there's a racist element to how he
Speaker 4: was perceived, how people talked about his boxing, how people
Speaker 4: talked about his childhood, and how people saw him in
Speaker 4: American society. But I also think there's like racism towards
Speaker 4: Robin Gibbons, where like black women are not seen as
Speaker 4: victims of violence right.
Speaker 1: Salamisha also said that these historic biases, these myths are
Speaker 1: part of the reason Robin wasn't believed.
Speaker 4: The same myth of black men being hyper violent that
Speaker 4: comes from slavery. Also, there are myths of black women,
Speaker 4: you know, being jezebels or whorerors that like legitimated the
Speaker 4: violence against them during slavery as well. And so you
Speaker 4: have these two myths that are just circulating and international imagination.
Speaker 4: And you have Mike Tyson, who is physically much stronger
Speaker 4: than Robin Gibbons, and you have her saying publicly that
Speaker 4: he's abused her, and he doesn't refute it. So all
Speaker 4: of that is true, and yet people still didn't believe her.
Speaker 4: So there's a lot of like mental gymnastics that one
Speaker 4: has to do. When even the person who's being accused
Speaker 4: of the violence doesn't say it didn't happen, it just
Speaker 4: speaks to like, one, how little we actually value the
Speaker 4: truth of violence against women, particularly violence against women in
Speaker 4: homes and in marriages. But then two, the layer of
Speaker 4: him being an African Recan man and her being an
Speaker 4: African Recan woman, I think adds a kind of confusion
Speaker 4: I think on the part of how the media is
Speaker 4: going to deal with it, Black women aren't seen as
Speaker 4: people who are potential victims. They're not delicate, they're not fragile.
Speaker 4: We're superhuman in a different way, and so when we
Speaker 4: say that someone's attacked us, we're actually seen as people
Speaker 4: who are unattackable and therefore unbelievable. It wasn't just Mike Tyson,
Speaker 4: I think, being a victim of racism, and therefore he's
Speaker 4: seen as hyper violent. But Robin Gibbons probably was never
Speaker 4: going to be seen as someone who could have been
Speaker 4: a victim, given this history of race and gender in America.
Speaker 6: So, Susie, I know we'll hear more from Salivation later,
Speaker 6: but I want to take us back to the timeline.
Speaker 6: So the interview airs and the public reaction is not good,
Speaker 6: and then, if I'm remembering correctly, Mike Tyson begins to
Speaker 6: completely unravel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So once the interview airs and the reaction is
Speaker 1: that it's like a humiliation for him, he completely loses
Speaker 1: his ship. A couple of days later, he had as
Speaker 1: such an intense meltdown that the police are called to
Speaker 1: their New Jersey mansion. He's literally throwing furniture through the windows.
Speaker 1: I mean, the marriage at this point is essentially over.
Speaker 1: And Robin has told this story about kind of the
Speaker 1: moment where she realizes she can't stay in the marriage anymore.
Speaker 1: He's having this extremely violent sort of rage that's going
Speaker 1: on four hours, and she and her mother and her
Speaker 1: sister and some other staff are hiding in a closet
Speaker 1: off the kitchen, desperately like trying to keep themselves safe
Speaker 1: from him, and she looks down at her sister, and
Speaker 1: her sister is just weeping, And in that moment, she says,
Speaker 1: she realized that she's not just putting herself through this,
Speaker 1: but that she's putting her family through this. And she
Speaker 1: decides that they have to leave, and they flee to California.
Speaker 1: So within a week, Robin files for divorce, citing irreconcilable
Speaker 1: differences and spousal abuse. And in that divorce petition, she
Speaker 1: really does not hold back. She asks for a restraining order.
Speaker 1: She says, my husband has throughout our marriage been violent,
Speaker 1: physically abusive, prone to unprovoked rages of violence and destruction.
Speaker 1: She describes this incident in the house the most recent
Speaker 1: incident in which I was physically terrorized occurred on October second.
Speaker 1: I was awakened by Michael hitting about my body and
Speaker 1: my head with his closed fist and open hand. She's
Speaker 1: and I think it's like worth remembering the disparity in
Speaker 1: their sizes here.
Speaker 5: Ye, exactly.
Speaker 6: All spousal abuse is terrible, but this is the literal
Speaker 6: heavyweight champion of the world and she's talking about his
Speaker 6: closed fist like that is his punching hand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she literally says, it's the latest in a continuous
Speaker 1: horror story for me. He has repeatedly hit me, thrown
Speaker 1: things at me, threatened to kill me, and threatened to
Speaker 1: kill my sister, my mom and employees.
Speaker 5: Wow, it turns so quickly.
Speaker 6: It's like they're on that show to supposedly rehabilitate or
Speaker 6: show that they love each other.
Speaker 1: And that he's still God died like a leading into that,
Speaker 1: and then she's like, you know what, No, this is
Speaker 1: not a good guy.
Speaker 5: Well, it just explodes.
Speaker 1: He's violent and actually, interestingly, even as she's filing this petition,
Speaker 1: her attorney still says to the press she loves Mike Tyson,
Speaker 1: but there is continued violence and she fears for her safety.
Speaker 6: So I mean, I think that's always been clear, Like
Speaker 6: that shouldn't be surprising. It is possible to love someone
Speaker 6: and for them to be a terrible, horrible abuser.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, I think it's actually common, right, Like, most
Speaker 1: people do love their abusers. That's why they put up
Speaker 1: or it's like a twisted form of love, or they
Speaker 1: believe it's love. That's what your abuser is using against
Speaker 1: you often is sort of that knowledge that you don't
Speaker 1: want to leave, but that they're going to push you
Speaker 1: and push you and push you until maybe you don't
Speaker 1: feel like you have a choice.
Speaker 2: And that seems like is what happened here.
Speaker 1: And at this point, Mike reacts by waging open war
Speaker 1: on her, So she unleashes this anger in him that
Speaker 1: he now begins to feel comfortable taking out publicly, Like
Speaker 1: we know he's been taking out this anger on her,
Speaker 1: you know, privately.
Speaker 5: Oh, so he's now just like, but.
Speaker 1: Now he's just talking so much shit about her in
Speaker 1: the press. He counter sues her.
Speaker 5: Oh, he counter sues her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he fils for an annulment in New Jersey, which,
Speaker 1: unlike California, doesn't have a fifty to fifty split. So
Speaker 1: he's basically like implying that she filed in California for
Speaker 1: the money.
Speaker 2: He charges that she.
Speaker 1: Tricked him into the marriage and that she waged a
Speaker 1: campaign to publicly humiliate him, grip him of his manhood
Speaker 1: and his dignity, and to destroy his credibility as a
Speaker 1: public figure. I mean, he has now decided that she
Speaker 1: is the enemy, and he is someone who when he
Speaker 1: decides that you're the enemy, really leans into that in
Speaker 1: an extremely aggressive way. So initially she says, I'm going
Speaker 1: to walk away from this marriage. I don't want anything.
Speaker 1: But he is so joh meaningless about her and relentless
Speaker 1: in the press. He says that her miscarriage was false.
Speaker 1: He claims she was never pregnant, even though she says
Speaker 1: he had seen ultrasounds. He says about her and her mother,
Speaker 1: And this one I think is the most shocking. They
Speaker 1: don't like black people. In an interview with The Sun
Speaker 1: Times Chicago. Sometimes they use them, but they don't like
Speaker 1: or respect black people.
Speaker 2: They want to be white so bad.
Speaker 1: The way they talk about black people, you'd think you
Speaker 1: were living with the Ku Klux Klan.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And so I think there's also this thing that he
Speaker 1: is tapping into, which is in the Black community. He
Speaker 1: is a real hero, right, so she is seen as
Speaker 1: betraying people to some degree, and he is really giving
Speaker 1: a dog whistle to that by claiming that she's essentially
Speaker 1: a white supremacist.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's so interesting because it reminds me of
Speaker 6: Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill. Yes, and the way that
Speaker 6: he used the language about a very public lynching exactly,
Speaker 6: and that was just a few years later. It's almost
Speaker 6: as if this sort of not payd the like, I
Speaker 6: don't know what the right terminology is, but there is
Speaker 6: some reflection of this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you see echoes of the same kind of thing,
Speaker 1: which is there is this struggle in the black community
Speaker 1: where even with Bill Cosby, I think there was initially
Speaker 1: a lot of pushback when people came forward because the
Speaker 1: idea was like, we don't have that many heroes, you
Speaker 1: shouldn't denigrate them, even when they've done something that deserves
Speaker 1: to be called out.
Speaker 4: Mike Tyson was a rare African American man who had
Speaker 4: reached the kind of the apex of his profession.
Speaker 2: That's Almi Shatilada again.
Speaker 4: And so that need, that desire, that hope to protect
Speaker 4: his status I think comes at the expense of someone
Speaker 4: like Robin Gibbons. So you have two African Americans, arguably
Speaker 4: both at the peak of their professions and then these
Speaker 4: accusations of violence. And so because of America has this
Speaker 4: long history of lynching and attacking African American men who
Speaker 4: are in high profile positions, there is a sense that
Speaker 4: we have to protect this person at any cost. The
Speaker 4: other part of that, of course, is there's an African
Speaker 4: American woman here who is also a victim of racism,
Speaker 4: a victim of sexism, and when she speaks out about
Speaker 4: violence against her by this man, she suddenly doesn't have
Speaker 4: a racial identity. She's no longer seen as a victim.
Speaker 4: She's seen as someone who's in cahoots with American racism
Speaker 4: to take him down. And so that's the tragedy of
Speaker 4: the Robin Givens Mike Tyson situation.
Speaker 6: It really must have felt so dehumanizing for Robin to
Speaker 6: just be stripped of her identity in that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the crazy thing is he just continues to
Speaker 1: give these interviews. He calls her slime of the slime.
Speaker 1: He says she tried to kill him with the drugs
Speaker 1: at which one he's talking about lithium, so there's obviously
Speaker 1: trying to kill him with the drugs. She eventually gets
Speaker 1: so frustrated she sues him for defamation and she's like,
Speaker 1: he accusing me of trying to steal his money.
Speaker 2: That's not true.
Speaker 1: So she's trying to fight that, and then eventually she
Speaker 1: just is like, I can't do this with you. She
Speaker 1: just drops the suit and their divorce is finalized, ironically
Speaker 1: on Valentine's Day of nineteen eighty nine, almost exactly a
Speaker 1: year after they were married.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 6: Okay, so the divorce is finalized. You know, hopefully she
Speaker 6: gets a moment to take a breath. This sounds absolutely awful,
Speaker 6: but the public sentiment doesn't really change, right, Like, is
Speaker 6: there any to me? It's like, there's no doubt in
Speaker 6: my mind that she was abused, But do people believe
Speaker 6: that or they still after all of this, are like, no,
Speaker 6: she's just going after his reputation.
Speaker 2: People seem not to believe that.
Speaker 1: And what's crazy about that is that he does actually
Speaker 1: admit it. So he has for many years denied it.
Speaker 1: He denied it at the time, he denies it for
Speaker 1: many years afterwards.
Speaker 5: He didn't admit it.
Speaker 6: In the Barbara Walders interview, right, even though she's sitting
Speaker 6: there next to him describing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he doesn't admit it.
Speaker 1: And to be clear, when you listen to the tape,
Speaker 1: which you know, we played at the top of episode one,
Speaker 1: she doesn't exactly admit it either. That's why her divorce
Speaker 1: filing is seen as such a big step, because she's
Speaker 1: sort of dancing around it too. You know, he shakes,
Speaker 1: he this, he that, but she stops short of quite
Speaker 1: saying that he hits. And I think that is what
Speaker 1: he leans into. Although there is this one thing that
Speaker 1: comes out that's so interesting. So while they were married,
Speaker 1: this friend of his, this fellow boxing champion Jose Torres,
Speaker 1: is working on a biography of him and he's interviewing
Speaker 1: him for months. So he's just a friend who's turned
Speaker 1: into an author and they're just doing these series of interviews.
Speaker 1: And I think Mike is used to just like cutting
Speaker 1: it up with his friends. He doesn't really think about
Speaker 1: what's going to be in this book. When the book
Speaker 1: is released, you know, just a few months after their
Speaker 1: divorce is finalized, it includes a passage where Mike very
Speaker 1: clearly admits to hitting Robin.
Speaker 5: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: And it's something Mike said when they were still together
Speaker 1: and this sort of press storm hadn't started yet, so
Speaker 1: he probably didn't realize it was okay, it was like
Speaker 1: before he would have caught himself. Yes, And he probably
Speaker 1: doesn't think that Torres is going to put it in the book.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a friend, and this is the passage.
Speaker 1: Torres asks him about the best punch he'd ever thrown,
Speaker 1: presumably thinking he's going to refer to a punch in
Speaker 1: the ring. Yeah, obviously, and Mike smiles and tells him
Speaker 1: I'll never forget that punch. It was when I fought
Speaker 1: with Robin in Steve's apartment. She really offended me, and
Speaker 1: I went, bam, holy shit, and wait, let me finish
Speaker 1: the passage because it's doesn't get better. And she flew backward,
Speaker 1: hitting every fucking wall in the apartment. That was the
Speaker 1: best punch I've ever thrown in my fucking life.
Speaker 5: Wow, Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Right, So you would think that's horrifying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's absolutely horrifying, And you would think that when
Speaker 1: this book comes out suddenly the public turns on him
Speaker 1: and rallies around her.
Speaker 6: Was that line, you know, pulled out and covered the
Speaker 6: way that it would be now.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's in the way that it
Speaker 1: would be now, and that it was pulled out and covered,
Speaker 1: but it was just drowned out by all the other noise.
Speaker 6: Right. Well that's the thing too, It's like so much
Speaker 6: has happened now they're divorced. Like how many people who
Speaker 6: believe that she's an evil witch actually read this line
Speaker 6: or are reading the next bit of tabloid cover?
Speaker 1: Sure, and I think jose Taurus doesn't have a lot
Speaker 1: of incentive to really do a big push on this
Speaker 1: particular part of the book because again, it's meant to
Speaker 1: be a friendly book. This is his friend who's given
Speaker 1: him all this access, so you know, whereas now, if
Speaker 1: you were marketing a book, you would make sure to
Speaker 1: pull that out and make sure that was in every interview.
Speaker 2: I think that's not really what happens.
Speaker 6: Well, that's sort of fascinating too. It's like that they
Speaker 6: didn't think that that was such a big deal, right, It.
Speaker 1: Just seems wild. And there's other things in the book
Speaker 1: that are also really disturbing. There's a passage where he says,
Speaker 1: I like to hurt women when I make love to them.
Speaker 1: I like to hear them scream with pain, to see
Speaker 1: them bleed. He gives me pleasure. This is what he's
Speaker 1: willing to admit to someone.
Speaker 6: Was there any way that Robin could take that and
Speaker 6: use it in her defamation suit?
Speaker 2: At this point, she's dropped all that.
Speaker 5: I guess the divorce had already gone through.
Speaker 2: Right, She's dropped the defamation suit.
Speaker 5: And like, was it?
Speaker 6: It's like this guy should have been a witness in
Speaker 6: the divorce proceedings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. I mean she couldn't in the end.
Speaker 1: The book didn't come out until all that stuff was over,
Speaker 1: but it would have been helpful.
Speaker 6: Okay, So Susie, let me just take us back for
Speaker 6: a moment. We started this episode by saying that at
Speaker 6: some point Robin becomes known as the most hated women
Speaker 6: in America, but we haven't exactly talked about how that happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that particular title, which is very specific, obviously
Speaker 1: comes about through a couple of things. There's the original
Speaker 1: Barbara Walters interview, which obviously we've gone through all the
Speaker 1: backlash to it. Then the day she files for divorce
Speaker 1: CNN's Newsnight, and I think this really reveals how the
Speaker 1: story is starting to cross over from tabloid to mainstream
Speaker 1: press runs two poles. On October seventh, they ask who's
Speaker 1: at fault in the marriage breakup? Mike Tyson or Robin Gibbons,
Speaker 1: which again like, let's just take a moment, like they're
Speaker 1: asking us on TV, yeah, on CNN, like to just
Speaker 1: take a moment to like how crazy that is? And
Speaker 1: ninety three percent of the callers say it is Robin.
Speaker 6: Oh, so people actually call in to answer yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 6: so retro and seven percent say it's Mike.
Speaker 1: So just to give you an idea of how much
Speaker 1: public sentiment is against her. And then I guess because
Speaker 1: of the success of that pole. On October tenth, they
Speaker 1: run another pole, should Mike Tyson be granted an annulment
Speaker 1: because and at this point he's counterfeit her to annul
Speaker 1: the marriage? And ninety two percent of people say yes,
Speaker 1: which also makes no sense. I mean, there's no grounds
Speaker 1: for an annulment. And there's also some pole that USA
Speaker 1: Today's television show. I guess they had a television show
Speaker 1: at the time. Should she get any of his money?
Speaker 1: Ninety six percent people say she doesn't. So these polls
Speaker 1: are cited in a lot of the media coverage that
Speaker 1: comes after it. And then Robin actually sits down with
Speaker 1: Barbara Walters again, so this time by herself, after the
Speaker 1: divorce has been announced, and in the introduction to her,
Speaker 1: Barbara Walters informs her at this point that she could
Speaker 1: perhaps qualify as the most hated woman in America.
Speaker 5: Oh wow, so she says that line.
Speaker 1: It's still qualified, right, you could perhaps be the most
Speaker 1: hated woman in America. And then I think this is
Speaker 1: what really solidifies it.
Speaker 2: Right after that, there is this Chicago Tribune peace.
Speaker 5: This is all like within a moment in October.
Speaker 6: Wow, Barbara Wilders interview happens, She fils for divorce, the
Speaker 6: divorce doesn't go through. She then goes back on Barbara Walters.
Speaker 6: Then the Chicago Tribune piece comes out. All these polls
Speaker 6: are happening in the back of the.
Speaker 1: Background, right, And what happens here is that the Chicago
Speaker 1: Tribune is syndicated by a lot of other papers, So
Speaker 1: a lot of people see this column and this article
Speaker 1: has the headline most hated title to Robin Gibbons.
Speaker 6: Okay, And side note, when an article is syndicated, that
Speaker 6: means the reporters of the Chicago Tribune wrote it, and
Speaker 6: then it gets published in like every newspaper across America.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is a very widely read article. It's
Speaker 1: just FYI written by a woman, which I feel they
Speaker 1: need to tell you for obvious reasons. And this includes
Speaker 1: the CNN polls as the initial evidence for why she's
Speaker 1: the most hated. But then it has this line, in
Speaker 1: spite of giving up any claims on Mike Tyson's money,
Speaker 1: the soon to be ex MISSUS World Heavyweight Champion is
Speaker 1: the unequivocal holder of the most Hated woman in America title.
Speaker 1: So I think this is the line that kind of
Speaker 1: solidifies this idea. And then she goes on to sort
Speaker 1: of interview all these famous or somehow she finds relevant
Speaker 1: people about why they dislike her so much, and there's
Speaker 1: this quote from the woman who wrote Dear Abby, which
Speaker 1: is perhaps the most famous, the most famous advice in
Speaker 1: America America, and this is what she says. I see
Speaker 1: this big, strong, muscular guy who's really a marshmallow inside.
Speaker 1: It seems like he's the one who's been abused. I'd
Speaker 1: say he's been had, and that's why he's getting all
Speaker 1: the sympathy for all of his World Championships. I think
Speaker 1: he was naive. Like does that not just s blow
Speaker 1: your mind that someone who could have watched that same
Speaker 1: interview that we watched would think that he was just
Speaker 1: the sweet marshmallow, Like it's just really hard to wrap
Speaker 1: your head around. And then the reporter talks to this
Speaker 1: divorce attorney and this is what he says, Mike Tyson
Speaker 1: has one of the most prestigious titles in the world.
Speaker 1: And the way she talked about him in that interview
Speaker 1: with Barbara Walters turned my stomach. It was the most
Speaker 1: incredible put down, and I see put downs every day.
Speaker 1: And the way he put up with that mother, that's
Speaker 1: another reason why people side with him. These people just
Speaker 1: manipulated a poor, ignorant guy. They obviously used him for
Speaker 1: his money. Here she is this beautiful college graduate. The
Speaker 1: guy is less than intelligent and less than attractive, which
Speaker 1: is also just like gross to begin with. Why is
Speaker 1: he insulting Mike Tyson while he's defending him. It feels
Speaker 1: like racist that he's talking about how stupid and unattractive
Speaker 1: Mike Tyson is. There's nothing in this that doesn't actually
Speaker 1: turn my stomach. But you know, this is how people
Speaker 1: felt about it at the time. This is like a
Speaker 1: reflection of the public sentiment. And there's one other detail
Speaker 1: in this column which I think is much more common
Speaker 1: now but was relatively unusual then, which is people have
Speaker 1: started wearing free Mike Tyson. Oh wow, Okay, yes, so
Speaker 1: I guess it to be free from a woman who's
Speaker 1: filed for divorce against him, Like, I don't even understand that.
Speaker 6: The other thing is so wild is the headlines from
Speaker 6: this time. So you had pulled all of these headlines,
Speaker 6: our researcher, I pulled all these headlines together, and I
Speaker 6: was just skimming over them and thinking to myself, Oh
Speaker 6: my god. It's like they've taken the boxing terminology, and
Speaker 6: they've also taken the terminology of domestic violence, and they've
Speaker 6: made puns out of it. Yeah, so let me just
Speaker 6: read your these the Philadelphia Daily News. A lot of
Speaker 6: this is coming right in October and November of nineteen
Speaker 6: eighty eight, when all of this is blowing up. The
Speaker 6: headline is taking a few swings at Robin. Then there's
Speaker 6: another one from like a small town paper that says,
Speaker 6: knocking Robin. Another one from Fort Myers News, blow by
Speaker 6: blow Colin Robin and Mike's year, Like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really, it's so gross, And also you can just
Speaker 1: see how clever that these headline writers must think they're being,
Speaker 1: Like it reveals sort of just like this cat a
Speaker 1: leer kind of jokey way in which this was discussed.
Speaker 6: And then the other thing too, is that all of
Speaker 6: these articles begin by repeating what you have just described
Speaker 6: to us, that most hated woman in America line. So
Speaker 6: they will say things like, well, headlines proclaim her the
Speaker 6: most haated woman in America, and it's like, well, you
Speaker 6: are the headline. Yeah, you are claiming her, yes, And actually,
Speaker 6: this whole description you've now taken us through is such
Speaker 6: a crystallized version of how narratives take yes. It's so
Speaker 6: fascinating from like a narrative media perspective, because it's like, yeah,
Speaker 6: one person says one thing, and then a newspaper picks
Speaker 6: it up, and then it gets syndicated, and then every
Speaker 6: other article just keeps repeating it and regurgitating it until
Speaker 6: it sticks. And so ultimately there's this People magazine cover
Speaker 6: with a photo of Robin and the headline is why
Speaker 6: does everyone hate me? And it's like, well, because we've
Speaker 6: literally been saying that everyone hates you.
Speaker 1: Right, it has a real impact, right, the real world
Speaker 1: impact impact. At one point, Robin tells Essence Magazine that
Speaker 1: during this time, a woman walked up to her on
Speaker 1: the street and yelled, he should have kicked your ass.
Speaker 2: I wish he would have killed you.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 6: Okay, So that's like the pre Internet version of like
Speaker 6: all of the hate sent it women who speak up
Speaker 6: on Twitter, except that you actually have to walk up
Speaker 6: to the person and say it to their face.
Speaker 1: And I think also it really speaks to this idea
Speaker 1: that now people complain about being canceled and like getting
Speaker 1: a little bit of shit online. I mean the things
Speaker 1: that Robin went through, Like she is literally ostracized for
Speaker 1: just having been honest about her life.
Speaker 5: She is branded with that title.
Speaker 2: It follows her for a really long time.
Speaker 6: Suffice to say, I assume she regrets having done that.
Speaker 6: Original Barbara Walters interview.
Speaker 2: She does regret it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know how anybody couldn't, you know,
Speaker 1: looking back on what happened as a result. But she
Speaker 1: did say that to Oprah in two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: when she released her book. She went on Oprah to
Speaker 1: promote it and Oprah asked her specifically if she regretted it.
Speaker 2: And she said that she did.
Speaker 1: She was in no state to really sit and do
Speaker 1: anything at that time, and that part of it is
Speaker 1: she was precocious and she felt like she could handle
Speaker 1: it and I can go talk to the doctor and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna save him.
Speaker 2: But obviously, you know it was more than she could handle.
Speaker 1: And Oprah says to her, you were pretty villified at
Speaker 1: the time, but even in two thousand and four, she's
Speaker 1: still being villified. And then, in sort of a wild
Speaker 1: follow up, Mike Tyson does an interview with Oprah in
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, just five years after Oprah has
Speaker 1: had this conversation with Robin Gibbons, and he jokes about
Speaker 1: hitting Robin during his marriage, and it's really shocking. You
Speaker 1: have to hear it, and you have to hear the
Speaker 1: audience's reaction.
Speaker 2: Were you surprised that she was saying those things? Yeah,
Speaker 2: I truly wanted to soccer, you know that particular bok.
Speaker 2: I truly wanted to soccer.
Speaker 5: I mean, after from the audience, I just it's I
Speaker 5: can't get over it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really every time I hear it, it's still
Speaker 1: is so jarring to me.
Speaker 6: And you know what it reminds me of is when
Speaker 6: the audience laughed at Trump joking about sexual assault only recently.
Speaker 6: It's so disturbing and it's like so baked in and
Speaker 6: this is twenty years after the actual event that they're
Speaker 6: talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the brick Kvnah
Speaker 1: hearing too. Do you remember when Christine Blosi Ford says
Speaker 1: like she remembers the laughter. It's like that same kind
Speaker 1: of uncomfortable laughter that people sort of lean into in
Speaker 1: these moments where they're uncomfortable, but also they're trying to
Speaker 1: dismiss the seriousness of something.
Speaker 6: And maybe like not laughing about domestic violence accusations is
Speaker 6: just like a good rule, just a rule of thumb
Speaker 6: and domestic of our sexual violence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And to be clear, Robin is really upset by
Speaker 1: this interview that Mike Tyson does with Oprah. At this point,
Speaker 1: she's the spokesperson for the National Domestic Island's hot line
Speaker 1: Oh Okay, and she writes Oprah a letter saying she
Speaker 1: was hurt that Oprah didn't say anything or ask the
Speaker 1: audience to stop laughing when it happened. She says, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be honest if I didn't say. There wasn't a
Speaker 1: part of me that wanted you to say that's not right.
Speaker 1: When there's this laughter, if you were in that situation
Speaker 1: out there, it kind of lightens it for all the
Speaker 1: women that are experiencing this. Yeah, and that's a good point, right.
Speaker 1: A lot of people who are watching the Oprah Show
Speaker 1: might be going through something like this and seeing the
Speaker 1: audience laugh at Mike Tyson talking about socking her probably
Speaker 1: doesn't make them feel empowered to find a way out
Speaker 1: of that.
Speaker 5: Situation, so to speak about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and ultimately Oprah does apologize.
Speaker 5: Oh that's interesting. I can't imagine that happens very often.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I assume it's pretty rare. Do you
Speaker 1: remember when you first encountered her in the zeitgeist?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I remember watching Robin Gibbons on the television show
Speaker 4: Head of the Class.
Speaker 1: We've talked a lot about the societal impact, and Salamisia
Speaker 1: has weighed in on the racial aspects, which has been
Speaker 1: really helpful. But I also just wanted to hear how
Speaker 1: this felt for Salamisia on a personal level. And she
Speaker 1: know she was thirteen years old when this interview aired,
Speaker 1: and a fan of Robin's from those head of the
Speaker 1: class years.
Speaker 4: Robin Gibven stood out to me partly because of her voice,
Speaker 4: and like, her voice and my voice aren't that dissimilar.
Speaker 4: Like I used to be called like a bally girl,
Speaker 4: a lot so of a black girl who had a
Speaker 4: particular kind of speech pattern an accent. And she was
Speaker 4: a glamorous black girl who was also a nerd.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and she was kind of like sharp tongued and
Speaker 1: like sassy in a way that I feel like I
Speaker 1: really related to.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you felt that as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, she had like a wit to her.
Speaker 4: And I was a black girl at an independent school
Speaker 4: in New Jersey who wasn't fashionable or glamorous and was athletic,
Speaker 4: but it was nerdy too, And so I think she
Speaker 4: represented someone I could aspire to be because she was
Speaker 4: so pretty, so smart, so witty, and she was also
Speaker 4: so like above the fray.
Speaker 1: What's your memory of that infamous interview with Barbara waltzs.
Speaker 4: It was just so shocking because I didn't one understand
Speaker 4: what he was talking about, but two I actually did
Speaker 4: feel like I grew up in a my stepfather was
Speaker 4: physically violent with my mother, so I was familiar with
Speaker 4: domestic violence, and so her testimony really resonated with me,
Speaker 4: and I felt deep compassion for her.
Speaker 5: And it was also just kind of like.
Speaker 4: Odd and jarring to have them sitting next to each
Speaker 4: other in this interview, with this disclosure of domestic violence.
Speaker 5: It was something that I didn't really know what.
Speaker 4: To do with, but it really stood out to me
Speaker 4: because it was such a public disclosure of a woman
Speaker 4: who was trapped in a marriage in which she felt
Speaker 4: like she couldn't really leave, and yet she was doing
Speaker 4: it on national television.
Speaker 1: So when did you realize that the reaction to it
Speaker 1: was so different from your own, that the general public's
Speaker 1: reaction was like an outpouring of sympathy for him and
Speaker 1: a lack of empathy for her.
Speaker 4: Well, I think almost immediately there was like a kind
Speaker 4: of public backlash against Robin Gibbons, because she went from
Speaker 4: being someone who was so appreciated for her beauty and
Speaker 4: appreciated for her charm and her wit to someone who's
Speaker 4: seen suddenly as just being with Mike Tyson for his
Speaker 4: fame and his fortune. So whatever status she had that
Speaker 4: attracted him to her was suddenly non existent. She was
Speaker 4: a woman who's just with him as an accessory as
Speaker 4: part of his rise to fame. And then once she
Speaker 4: disclosed that she was being physically abused in that relationship,
Speaker 4: she just went not from being a victim of abuse,
Speaker 4: but she suddenly slid quite easily into the kind of
Speaker 4: gold digger stereotype.
Speaker 1: And do you feel like that shaped sort of how
Speaker 1: you saw the way black women were treated when they
Speaker 1: came forward with something that was so personal.
Speaker 4: I knew that it was possible that a black woman
Speaker 4: could be victimized by someone she was in an intimate
Speaker 4: relationship with, and yet it seemed impossible based on the
Speaker 4: media responses that seemed like the rhetoric and the kind
Speaker 4: of need York community responses that like, know, this stuff
Speaker 4: doesn't really happen.
Speaker 5: So that's kind of how I had to coexist with
Speaker 5: these two truths.
Speaker 1: We've had these sort of revisiting of all these women,
Speaker 1: and that's become almost like a cottage industry. Why do
Speaker 1: you think she's never gotten that re examination? In that
Speaker 1: larger way.
Speaker 4: You have to actually understand the complexity of black women
Speaker 4: in terms of class and race and gender and performance
Speaker 4: to appreciate Robin Gibbons because I think a lot of
Speaker 4: the recuperation projects that we've seen have been primarily not
Speaker 4: exclusively because there's been stuff on Janet Jackson, have been
Speaker 4: on white women.
Speaker 5: Yeah, right, and so where does Robin Gibbons fit in
Speaker 5: to that? Because she's a black woman.
Speaker 4: Who was also rendered a gold digger and not seen
Speaker 4: as black, but was black. She's a rich figure, and
Speaker 4: sometimes I think people have that level of complexity just
Speaker 4: get written out of history constantly, a little window breaker.
Speaker 6: It was so great to hear from Salamisha on this,
Speaker 6: and also so interesting what she said about feeling like
Speaker 6: it was impossible for people to believe that a black
Speaker 6: woman had actually been a victim of violence, and that
Speaker 6: reminds me of cases that we're even seeing in the
Speaker 6: present day. It almost reminds me of me too in
Speaker 6: some sense, Like we know that racial bias comes into
Speaker 6: play when we think about how we believe black women,
Speaker 6: whether it's sexual assault, domestic violence, even in cases like
Speaker 6: maternal mortality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we just tend to sort of dismiss the pain
Speaker 1: of black women. There's sort of this trope of strong
Speaker 1: black women and they should be able to withstand anything.
Speaker 1: It doesn't feel like things are all that different today, right,
Speaker 1: not entirely. When you think about the case with Megan
Speaker 1: the Stallion, she was shot by someone she was having
Speaker 1: some kind of relationship with Tory Lanez in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: and you know, he was sentenced to ten years in
Speaker 1: prison this year, but people still taunt her online.
Speaker 5: She's got right, there's a huge against her.
Speaker 1: His team has maligned her in the press so much,
Speaker 1: and he still denies it. So it feels like there
Speaker 1: are a lot of parallels between what.
Speaker 2: Happened to Megan and what happened to Robin.
Speaker 6: And well also like the accusation of clout chasing versus
Speaker 6: gold dagger, like they're really similar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like the sort of modern day gold digging.
Speaker 1: And then also we just see these other examples, right,
Speaker 1: Like there's the Rihanna case with Chris Brown, and in
Speaker 1: that case, I feel like, you know, it was impossible
Speaker 1: to deny that Rihanna had been physically assaulted. The photo
Speaker 1: photographs and do you remember how awful those photographs were.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're so intense.
Speaker 6: But that was so interesting too because it was it
Speaker 6: almost worked in her favor because you could not deny
Speaker 6: that this had occurred, right, we couldn't deny evidence. But
Speaker 6: then when she talks about it, she says that having
Speaker 6: those pictures release was one of the most humiliating things
Speaker 6: in her life. You know.
Speaker 1: So it's this sort of thing that we expect, like
Speaker 1: we have to get a pound of flesh before we
Speaker 1: even begin to believe women. And even then, like Chris
Speaker 1: Brown's career has not taken the hit you would expect.
Speaker 1: It's not been completely what it might have been otherwise.
Speaker 1: But you know, Chloe Bailey just announced she's doing a
Speaker 1: single with him, and that feels really odd with what
Speaker 1: we know about Chris Brown. Just like Mike Tyson, he
Speaker 1: has been involved in a number of other assault incidents
Speaker 1: with women.
Speaker 6: It reminds me a bit too of r. Kelly and
Speaker 6: how it took, I mean, how long over a decade
Speaker 6: I think, or was it mostle decades for the women
Speaker 6: who initially spoke out against.
Speaker 5: Him, the black women to be believed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we just really require so much evidence in these
Speaker 1: cases when the man is sort of a beloved figure.
Speaker 1: And when you think about, you know, Mike Tyson, what's
Speaker 1: fascinating is that he's become an even.
Speaker 2: Broader sort of cultural phenomenon.
Speaker 1: Since this happened, he's become sort of this like beloved
Speaker 1: pop culture figure. He was in the Hangover movies. He's
Speaker 1: had this best selling memoir, Yeah Beyond Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: he did this one man show on Broadway that became
Speaker 1: sort of this likely deal that Spike Lee directed. It
Speaker 1: became an HBO special. He's had a cartoon series, which,
Speaker 1: I mean, wow, now we know not only was he
Speaker 1: very abusive to Robin Gibbons, he was convicted of raping someone.
Speaker 6: So you're talking about Desire Washington, right, Can you give
Speaker 6: us a little background on that case for those who
Speaker 6: might not know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, in nineteen ninety two, not long after this interview
Speaker 1: with Barbara Walters, Tyson is convicted of raping an eighteen
Speaker 1: year old girl named Desire Washington.
Speaker 2: She's Miss Black Rhode Island.
Speaker 1: She's in Indianapolis for the Miss Black America beauty pageant,
Speaker 1: and she meets Mike Tyson and agrees to go out
Speaker 1: with him, and he rapes her in what she describes
Speaker 1: again as an absolutely harrowing rape where she is sobbing
Speaker 1: and he is laughing through the experience. And he received
Speaker 1: a six year prison term. I mean he was released
Speaker 1: after three years, but he was in prison and that
Speaker 1: was very broadly publicized. It was also a huge case
Speaker 1: and Larry King went and interviewed him in prison.
Speaker 6: It's so easy to forget now in twenty twenty three
Speaker 6: that he was convicted and served time for rape.
Speaker 1: But also like, imagine giving that guy a cartoon series.
Speaker 1: He had a cartoon series where he like solved myster's
Speaker 1: Scooby Doo style for like Reesa in twenty fourteen to
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, right, okay, And that's also crazy because in
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, when he was asked about Desert Washington,
Speaker 1: a person he's been convicted of raping, he said about her,
Speaker 1: I really wish I had done it.
Speaker 2: Now now I really do want to rape her.
Speaker 5: What Who did he say that to?
Speaker 2: In an interview with Greta Van Sestren, like on Fox?
Speaker 2: They aired on Fox?
Speaker 6: Yeah, do I remember correctly that he actually appeared on
Speaker 6: an episode of Law and Order SV Yes.
Speaker 2: It was actually really controversial.
Speaker 1: He did a guest appearance and you know, people who
Speaker 1: watched that show were mad, like they were like, why
Speaker 1: are you putting this convicted rapist on television, And it's
Speaker 1: just because there has been this incredible whitewashing of his history,
Speaker 1: which again this year, another woman came forward and accused
Speaker 1: him of violently raping her in the nineteen nineties. So
Speaker 1: there's just this ongoing litany of issues around him, and
Speaker 1: yet somehow he's just kind of escaped from it all
Speaker 1: and is like considered sweet and funny and is on
Speaker 1: talk shows all the time.
Speaker 6: It's wild and so desire Washington, I mean, I feel
Speaker 6: like we could devote a whole other episode to her.
Speaker 6: Was the reaction to her similar to the reaction to
Speaker 6: Robin Ye.
Speaker 1: Very similar. She was very much skewed by the press.
Speaker 1: She did an interview with Barbara Walters.
Speaker 5: Oh, she also did an interview with Barbara Watchers very.
Speaker 2: On top of this bet.
Speaker 1: Barbara Walters and Barbara Watchers asked her this like really
Speaker 1: pointed question about what she thought was going to happen
Speaker 1: when she went up to the hotel room with him,
Speaker 1: like sort of blaming her.
Speaker 6: That is actually such a common question asked victims of
Speaker 6: assault or sexual assamt Well.
Speaker 1: It's like as if just your physical presence is consent,
Speaker 1: like if you deign to be in a room alone
Speaker 1: with a man that is like, in and of itself consent,
Speaker 1: which is just obviously not true. But Desira really gets
Speaker 1: the same treatment. She's called a gold digger, and she
Speaker 1: has actually really lived a life that completely abilies that
Speaker 1: she dropped out of public view after this and has
Speaker 1: lived like a very quiet private life. That's always one
Speaker 1: of these tropes that comes up, right, that these women
Speaker 1: do it for fame or for money, But for those
Speaker 1: of us who pay attention to these cases, that's very
Speaker 1: rarely what these women want or pursue after.
Speaker 6: Never get it, yes, you know, as if someone wants
Speaker 6: that kind of thing, right, as if that fame is
Speaker 6: anything other than being treated kind of like your radioactive
Speaker 6: in some way.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It takes Ronin, for example, ever to really recover her career.
Speaker 1: She's luckily gone on to have a real career in acting,
Speaker 1: and she went back ahead of the class and put
Speaker 1: her head down and just did the work, even though
Speaker 1: the press around her was crazy. And I think because
Speaker 1: Eddie Murphy had known her for a long time, he
Speaker 1: gives her this comeback vehicle. He puts her in the
Speaker 1: movie Boomerang in the nineties, and she slowly just worked
Speaker 1: and worked and found her way back. But that's not
Speaker 1: the norm. That's the exception in a lot of cases
Speaker 1: with Hiven like this.
Speaker 6: That's so interesting that you say she recovered. So, yes,
Speaker 6: she recovered, but that's very different than like thriving, right,
Speaker 6: I mean, what did that mean?
Speaker 7: Well?
Speaker 1: I think she would say she's thriving just based on
Speaker 1: you know, interviews that she's given and the way she
Speaker 1: talks about her life. Now, she became a mom and
Speaker 1: she has said that that's sort of the thing that
Speaker 1: saved her, and her two sons are sort of the
Speaker 1: thing that she's most proud of in her life. But
Speaker 1: you know, did she have the movie career that Robin
Speaker 1: Gibbons might have had had this not happened r her?
Speaker 1: I think it's impossible to know, but it's very likely,
Speaker 1: I know, right, But the fact is is that she
Speaker 1: has been able to make a living and work as
Speaker 1: an actress and recently she's directed some projects. So it
Speaker 1: does feel like she was able to salvage her career
Speaker 1: despite the fact that there was this real concerted effort
Speaker 1: to destroy her on many levels.
Speaker 5: Well, and she put her energy toward important causes as we.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's done a lot of advocacy for women who've
Speaker 1: been in violent situations. And I actually found this psa
Speaker 1: she did, which I think is worth listening to.
Speaker 3: You deserve a wonderful life, you know, and you deserve
Speaker 3: really good love, and you deserve to feel safe at home.
Speaker 7: If you were someone you know is in an abusive relationship,
Speaker 7: please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at one eight
Speaker 7: hundred seventy nine nine safe.
Speaker 6: It's actually incredible she's able to speak and wants to
Speaker 6: speak so openly about it.
Speaker 1: And I think for her that's a lot of the
Speaker 1: way in which she recovered. Her memoir really leans into
Speaker 1: how she found a lot of solace in her religion
Speaker 1: and how that is also how she was able to
Speaker 1: kind of forgive a lot of what's happened to her
Speaker 1: just generally. But you know, reading the book was so
Speaker 1: interesting because I had done almost all the research by
Speaker 1: the time I sat down to read her book. I
Speaker 1: feel like what happens with a lot of these stories
Speaker 1: is that they become kind of flattened by the media narratives.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 1: The story is objectively horrible on many levels, but when
Speaker 1: you're reading the book, it's impossible to sort of escape
Speaker 1: the human aspects of the story, Like it is so horrible,
Speaker 1: the descriptions. There's a passage which to me reads so
Speaker 1: clearly as a rape, although she does not herself define
Speaker 1: it that way. It is so hard to read sections
Speaker 1: of this book. And it's a reminder, you know, at
Speaker 1: least for me, that even when you're reading a lot
Speaker 1: about a story, you don't necessarily really take in the
Speaker 1: emotional aspects of it or the humanity of the people involved.
Speaker 1: In fact, sometimes the more you read about a story,
Speaker 1: the less the people involved feel like real people.
Speaker 2: Going through real trauma and pain.
Speaker 1: And I think that's one of the things that a
Speaker 1: lot of these stories highlight, which is that once a
Speaker 1: story sort of takes on a shape of its own
Speaker 1: in the media, it becomes almost like fictionalized for people,
Speaker 1: they forget that at the core of the story is
Speaker 1: a young woman who went through a year of extreme
Speaker 1: physical violence at the hands of a man she thought
Speaker 1: was the love of her life.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's easy to forget just what that must have
Speaker 6: done to her psychologically and what it would have taken
Speaker 6: to recover on top of what she was already facing.
Speaker 5: In the press and by the public.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean I just came away from this with
Speaker 1: so much admiration for her, because I think it would
Speaker 1: have broken a lot of people, you know, and she's
Speaker 1: gone on to make this really meaningful life she's really
Speaker 1: proud of. She says in the book, the life that
Speaker 1: I have now is greater, more full, more rich, more
Speaker 1: loving than anything I might have dared to dream. And
Speaker 1: that's just nice to hear, honestly, given what she went through.
Speaker 1: And she did an interview for an E News podcast
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen where she's talking to the host about
Speaker 1: how she looks back on this time in her life.
Speaker 3: I think that experience really gave me a sense of
Speaker 3: compassion for people, you know. It gave me a sense
Speaker 3: of hoping at least that you can go through difficult
Speaker 3: times and situations and really try to be better for it.
Speaker 6: It's so nice hearing her voice sounding so confident, full
Speaker 6: of strength.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really lovely, and I think that feels like
Speaker 1: a good place to end it. This is in retrospect.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Is there a cultural moment you can
Speaker 1: stop thinking about and want us to explore in a
Speaker 1: future episode. Email us at inretropod at gmail dot com,
Speaker 1: or find us on Instagram at in Retropod.
Speaker 6: If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
Speaker 6: on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you
Speaker 6: hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram,
Speaker 6: which we may or may not delete.
Speaker 1: You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
Speaker 1: and at suzib NYC. Also check out Jessica's books Feminist
Speaker 1: Fight Club and This Is eighteen.
Speaker 6: In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the Media.
Speaker 6: Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our
Speaker 6: engineer and sound designer. Sharon Acia is our researcher and
Speaker 6: associate producer.
Speaker 2: Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stemp and Katrina Norbel.
Speaker 2: Our artwork is from Pentagram.
Speaker 1: Additional editing help from Mary Doo and Mike Coscarelli, Sound
Speaker 1: correction and mastering by Amanda Rose Smith.
Speaker 2: We are your hosts Susie Vannecarum.
Speaker 5: And Jessica Bennett.
Speaker 6: We're also executive producers for even more check out in
Speaker 6: retropod dot com.
Speaker 5: See you next week.