On Monday, Kanye West was filmed berating a TMZ reporter after snatching her phone. The reporter, Melanie Miller, has now spoken out about the “alarming” incident.
In the latest episode of The TMZ podcast with Charlie Cotton, Miller opened up about “stumbling” into Kanye West while he was on the way to Charlie Wilson’s Hollywood Walk of Fame event in Los Angeles.
“I was alarmed,” Miller began. “I was like, ‘Whoa, I didn’t see that one coming.’ Because I’ve interviewed him before and he never talks to me. So I’m thinking, ‘I’ll just see if he’ll talk to me.'”
“It’s been very well talked about that… He won’t let Bianca [Censori] have an Instagram because he’s trying to protect her. So I’m saying, this is an easy opportunity for you to be like, ‘Of course I’m not controlling her.’ That’s all that I had going into it.”
The interview quickly went awry, with Kanye West snatching the reporter’s phone before unleashing a diatribe against her.
“People deserve answers to this kind of stuff,” she said. “If [Bianca’s] okay with it, that’s fine. If she’s posting those photos of her and her essentially naked body on her own Instagram because she wants to, because she wants to put that out there—fine. But he’s doing it. … He has such disrespect for women.”
Kanye West Calls Himself a ‘Superhero’ in Altercation With Reporter
In the now-viral altercation between Kanye West and Melanie Miller, the entirety of which filmed by a bystander, an offended West berates Miller as she follows him down the sidewalk waiting for the rapper to give her phone back.
The incident began with Miller approaching Kanye to ask if his wife, Bianca Censori, had “free will,” after which West snatched her phone and continued walking.
“Don’t come asking me that dumbass sh-t, I’m a person,” he said. “You think ‘cause you a white woman that you can walk up on me like that and ask me some dumbass sh-t like that? Ask me about my wife?”
“Do you have free will or you work for the devil?” he added.
Kanye West then asked Miller about her job and why she felt her initial question was appropriate, demanding answers.
“Is that your job to go up to every celebrity and ask them some dumbass sh-t about their wife?” he said. “Was it wrong for you to ask me about my wife—some dumbass disrespectful shit like that?”
“Answer the question,” he continued. “I’m supposed to answer your questions, answer my questions. … You asked me does my wife have free will. Was that a dumbass, disrespectful question to come ask a grown-ass superhero?”