Oprah Winfrey has publicly apologized to actress Robin Givens for not being toughter with her ex-husband Mike Tyson when he was a guest on her show.
Givens, who is now a spokesperson for the National Domestic Violence Hotline, wrote a fiery letter to Winfrey after watching the Tyson special in October, reprimanding Winfrey for allowing the former boxer to rage on about his ex-wife and win laughs from the studio audience as he recalled brutal encounters with her.
Appearing on the Oprah show on Friday, Givens fought back angry tears as she revealed she sat in disbelief as Winfrey's studio audience chuckled while Tyson admitted he wanted to "sock her" after an infamous TV interview with newswoman Barbara Walters.
In the special, Givens went into great detail about some of the fights she and her then-husband had had as a silent and enraged Tyson sat beside her.
Givens, who Tyson described as a "tough" and "mean" woman during his Oprah interview, told the talk show titan she was "really hurt" by the way Winfrey handled the chat with her ex.
Holding back tears, the actress said, "I wouldn't be honest if there wasn't a part of me that wanted you to go, when he said, 'Oh, I've socked her before...' 'That's not right.' And it wasn't right, it was painful."
"He can say whatever about me... but there are so many women like me, in my situation, that I just feel when there is this laughter, if you are in that situation out there, it kind of lightens it."
Oprah responded by insisting her studio audience laughed because "they were uncomfortable" and because Tyson used the word "sock". She also told Givens, "I don't think that they were laughing at you, I think they were laughing at the term."
She then offered her guest a personal apology, stating, "In that moment, I will tell you, I felt that I should have said something. I felt that I should have said, 'Audience, that isn't funny...' so I regret it."
"I would say to you and every woman, who has ever been hit, I feel that I did not handle that as well as I should have and I feel that I could have gone further and should have said more to clarify that what he was doing and what he was saying was wrong."
"So I apologize to you and I apologize to every woman who has ever been in that situation."
A relieved Givens said, "Thank you from the bottom of my heart."
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