R. Kelly saga gets 2nd season on Lifetime
NEW YORK – Few TV documentary series can boast having a more powerful real world impact than “Surviving R. Kelly.”
Although allegations of sexual abuse against minors followed R&B superstar R. Kelly for years, it was a six-part series aired by Lifetime last January featuring testimonials by women who said they’d been abused by Kelly that sparked new attention from authorities.
A year later, Lifetime is readying a follow-up series, “Surviving R. Kelly Part II: The Reckoning,” with one major difference: This time, R. Kelly will be behind bars when it airs.
Brie Miranda Bryant, Lifetime’s head of unscripted development, said the new series takes a wider and deeper look at some of the issues the first one raised. The first had 54 interviews; the follow-up has almost 70.
“It’s not really about R. Kelly. It’s about sexual violence against women in general and how we change that dialogue,” she said.
“Surviving R. Kelly Part II: The
Reckoning” will premiere at 8 p.m. Thursday on Lifetime. The six-hour series will run for two hours a night for three consecutive nights, concluding Saturday.
The new season includes interviews with women who haven’t spoken out publicly before and includes Tiffany Hawkins, who filed sexual charges in the case.
Another new voice is Jimmy Maynes, a veteran artist manager and former Jive Record executive who represents artists including Salt-N-Pepa.
While not a direct witness, Maynes does talk about being asked by Jive Records in 2002 to go to Chicago and buy up all the VHS and DVDs he could find that allegedly showed R. Kelly engaging in sexual acts with an underage girl. He said he confronted the singer, who claimed the man in the video was his twin brother. He has no twin.
Maynes also offers a critical look at the music industry, which he argues creates a culture that gives superstars like R. Kelly unquestioned authority.
“We don’t teach artists how to deal with fame. We teach them how to be famous . ... We don’t teach them what it’s like to be famous,” Maynes said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Kelly, 52, is in jail, scheduled to stand trial in Cook County in September, then in federal court in Chicago in April and again in federal court in New York the next month.
Bryant said the indictments against R. Kelly were never the goal of the series: “For Lifetime, in general, and my colleagues, it’s about continuing to be a platform for women’s stories, period, and that, to us, that is justice.”