The Biggest Takeaways From the First Night of ‘Surviving R. Kelly’

Night one of the highly-anticipated docuseries just aired. Here are the five biggest takeaways.

Jan 04, 2019

Lifetime’s docuseries Surviving R. Kelly debuted on Thursday night. The show, which runs through Saturday, documents decades of alleged abusive behavior by the singer through dozens of interviews with survivors, siblings, associates, experts, critics, and performers.

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The first two episodes focused on the beginning of Kelly’s career and the peak of his mega-stardom, ending just before the 2002 sex tape that would lead to his trial (and ultimate acquittal). It has harrowing first-person accounts of alleged physical abuse, controlling and manipulative behavior, nonconsensual taping of sexual encounters, and much, much more.


The show is sure to spark plenty of conversation, and hopefully encourage some long-overdue reckoning with Kelly’s alleged actions, and what it means to have supported him over the years. Here are five major takeaways from night one of Surviving R. Kelly.

R. Kelly’s former tour manager says Kelly was worried he got Aaliyah pregnant

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Image via Getty/Sal Idriss

One of the big Aaliyah-related takeaways of the first episode came out a few days ago: Singer Jovante Cunningham says she saw a then-27-year-old R. Kelly having sex with a teenage Aaliyah on a tour bus. But there are other big Aaliyah moments as well. Kelly’s former tour manager and personal assistant Demetrius Smith says he was involved enough in Kelly and Aaliyah’s relationship not only to have been at their secret wedding, but also to have forged paperwork that allowed Aaliyah to claim that she was 18 (she was in reality three years younger). In the first episode, Smith recalls Kelly saying at one point, “Man, we got Aaliyah in trouble.” When Smith asked for clarification, he remembers his boss responding, “I think she’s pregnant.”

R. Kelly allegedly recruited girls as young as 14 for sexual acts

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Image via Getty/Erika Goldring

Two separate women, Cunningham and Lisa Van Allen, say that R. Kelly was sexually involved with girls as young as 14. Singer Sparkle recalls Kelly beginning to groom her niece (who Sparkle would later testify appeared in Kelly’s now-infamous sex tape as a 14-year-old) when she was just 12.

“You Are Not Alone” was reportedly inspired by a teenager who miscarried R. Kelly’s child

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Lizzette Martinez says she was 17 years old when she met R. Kelly at a mall. She claims she became pregnant by him when she was still in high school, and then had a miscarriage. According to her, Kelly wrote Michael Jackson’s “You Are Not Alone” inspired by the loss.

R. Kelly’s ex-wife says their wedding was secret

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Image via Getty/Chance Yeh

Not only did some of R. Kelly’s then-teenage girlfriends say that they did not know until months afterwards that he had married dancer Andrea Lee (now Andrea Kelly), Andrea now says that the marriage itself was under wraps. Kelly’s brother Bruce confirms that neither of Kelly’s brothers were at the wedding, and Andrea says that Kelly sprung an elaborate ceremony on her without her knowledge. In the second episode, she says it was one of the first times she realized that he was, in her language, “controlling.”

Multiple women claim R. Kelly frequently made girls have sex in public

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Image via Getty/Jeff Kravitz

Jovante Cunningham remembers Kelly having sex with a teenage girl in the recording studio, with people watching, while he was singing the “Slow Dance” remix. Martinez recalls being in a car and being told to “perform sexual acts while his friends were in the back seat.”

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