Gayle King addresses the backlash she and her fellow Blue Origin passengers have faced following their brief spaceflight on April 14.
The CBS Mornings anchor spoke out during an April 16 interview with ET, defending the all-women spaceflight she joined alongside Katy Perry and explaining why she is “very disappointed and very saddened” by the fallout. The celebrity-filled mission, supported by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, has drawn criticism from several, including stars like Amy Schumer, Olivia Wilde, and Olivia Munn—but King believes much of it stems from a lack of understanding and research.
“This is what bothers me because I’ve certainly read some of the things online, coming from people that I know, that I like, that I consider friends,” King said about the famous faces criticizing the spaceflight. “And this is what I would say to that. Space is not an either-or. It’s a both-and because you do something in space, doesn’t mean you’re taking anything away from Earth.”
The morning news host offered her explanation of how Bezos is reportedly investing his billion-dollar net worth into when it comes to space exploration, and according to King, it’s to make our planet better.
“What you’re doing in space is trying to make things better here on Earth,” she said. “What Blue Origin wants to do is take the waste here and figure out a way to put it in space to make our planet cleaner.”
King also pushed back against those downplaying the 11-minute journey she took with Perry, Lauren Sánchez (Bezos’ fiancée), Amanda Nguyen, Aisha Bowe, and Kerianne Flynn, insisting it was more than just a “ride” and should be recognized as a legitimate spaceflight.
“Please don’t call it a ride. That is not a friggin’ ride,” King quipped. “Whenever a man goes up, you have never said to an astronaut, ‘Boy, what a ride.’ We duplicated the same trajectory that Alan Shepard did back in the day, pretty much. No one called that a ride. It was called a flight. It was called a journey.”
She continued, “Because a ride implies that it’s something frivolous or something that’s lighthearted. There was nothing frivolous about what we did and the machine that we were on and what it took for the people to get that machine up and running, to get us up and get us back down safely.”
At the end of the day, King is proud of what she achieved and sees the mission as a trailblazing moment—one that she hopes will inspire young girls watching to dream bigger.
“What it’s doing to inspire other women and young girls, please don’t ignore that,” she said. “I’ve had so many women and young girls reach out to me, and men too, by the way, men too, that say, ‘Wow, I never thought I could do that, but I see you doing it’ at this stage of my life. Who would have thunk it? Not me.”
RELATED CONTENT: Oprah Winfrey Down Bad Due To ‘Serious’ Stomach Flu, Gayle King Reveals
