Pharrell, Ellen address Kim Burrell’s anti-gay statements

Thursday’s episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show was a bit different than originally planned.

Gospel singer Kim Burrell was scheduled to perform a song from the Hidden Figures soundtrack with Pharrell Williams on the talk show, but her appearance was canceled after a video of Burrell making anti-gay statements at Houston’s Love & Liberty Fellowship Church went viral. In the video Burrell, a senior pastor at the church, calls homosexuality “perverted.”

On Tuesday, DeGeneres announced to fans on Twitter that Burrell would not be performing on the show, and Pharrell posted to Instagram denouncing “hate speech of any kind.”

In the episode, Pharrell and DeGeneres discuss Burrell and her comments directly.

“(Burrell) made a statement, and she said some very not nice things about homosexuals, so I didn’t feel that was good of me to have her on the show to give her a platform after she’s saying things about me,” the host explained, before turning to Pharrell.

“There’s no space, there’s no room for any kind of prejudice in 2017 and moving on. There’s no room,” the artist said.

He added that Burrell is a “fantastic singer,” and “I love her, just like I love everybody else and we all got to get used to that.

“We all have to get used to everyone’s differences and understand that this is a big, gigantic, beautiful, colorful world and it only works with inclusion and empathy. It only works that way.”