Pharrell Williams and Ellen Address Singer’s Canceled Appearance on the Show

Pharrell Williams joined Ellen on Thursday, and before he performed, he and Ellen DeGeneres cleared the air. Gospel singer Kim Burell was scheduled to appear on the show alongside Williams to perform the song “I See Victory” from the Hidden Figures soundtrack. Earlier this week, a video emerged in which Burell was shown preaching against homosexuality and referring to all homosexuals as perverts. DeGeneres, who is gay, immediately canceled Burell’s appearance on the show.

“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 ninth show to give her a platform after she’s saying things about me,” DeGeneres said.

Williams praised Burell’s ability as a singer but did not agree with her words from the video. He spoke of inclusion and against divisiveness, while noting that divisiveness does sometimes win out — even referencing last year’s election. For the most part, Williams preached empathy. He said, “Whenever you hear some sort of hate speech and 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.”

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