Former R. Kelly friend Keke Palmer talks heartbreak after seeing 'Surviving R. Kelly': 'The whole thing was eye-opening'

Watching the documentary series Surviving R. Kelly , in which multiple women accused the singer of having physically, sexually and mentally abused them when they were underage, was especially awful for Keke Palmer. The singer and actress was once Kelly’s friend.

“The whole thing was eye-opening, painful, sad, disappointing and heartbreaking,” Palmer, 25, said during a Sunday appearance on Watch What Happens Live.

Host Andy Cohen asked if Palmer was surprised.

“Yes, because that’s not the side I knew. That’s not the person that I worked with. That’s not the experience I had,” Palmer said. “So, just imagine if you're having a great experience with someone and then you're hearing all this stuff it’s like, ‘Why didn’t you show them what you showed me?’ That's the feeling I had.”

Palmer has said that Kelly changed the way she thought about balancing her career as both a singer and an actress, known for her work dating back to Nickelodeon’s True Jackson, VP and even earlier. He told her, “You don’t need to shy away from your acting,” she told Billboard in September 2017.

On WWHL, Palmer explained that Surviving R. Kelly was something she couldn’t even discuss after watching it.

“I hated talking about it because I felt like, man, you were a friend to me but then I'm seeing you as a foe to others and I'm hurt for them,” Palmer said. “How do I feel about it? How do I put myself in this position now? It was very sad. I think that anybody that loved him as a person probably feels that way. That’s not something you want to hear about somebody that you cared for. “

Palmer initially addressed the docuseries in January in a statement shared on social media. It read, in part, “Just finished Surviving R. Kelly and I have spent the last hour crying. As a student of R. Kelly’s for the time I was and having been around his light and understanding the obstacles he overcame as a child to actually be birthed into the musical genius he is today... All to put others through the same darkness he was running from is the most disheartening thing to accept.”

She said that she was “hurt and saddened,” and that she would “stand by my sisters because that’s simply what’s right and what I hope discontinues this behavior in anyone.”

Kelly is currently facing 10 charges of aggravated criminal sexual abuse in Chicago. He pleaded not guilty in June.

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