Remember when Jerry Seinfeld savagely refused to hug Kesha during a red carpet interview not once, not twice, but three painful times? It was truly the stuff of nightmares, but watching it from the comfort of our own screens made for some great laughs. Although Kesha didn’t say a word about issue since it all went down about a month ago, she’s now finally broken her silence.
In a recent interview with AJ Calloway, Seinfeld explained he didn’t hug Kesha because he simply didn’t know her, admitting, “I’m 63, I don’t know every pop star.” He continued and explained his perfectly reasonable policy of not hugging perfect strangers: “I have to meet someone, say hello. I gotta start somewhere.”
For her part, though, Kesha remained pretty quiet on the whole issue, presumably recovering from the overwhelming embarrassment of being rejected so publicly like that. The day after the video went viral, she did post an Instagram photo of her cat with some pretty suggestive hashtags, including #ilikehugs, #hugsrgreat, and #hugsnotdrugs.
But now that Kesha has released a new song and music video “Praying,” she’s back in the media spotlight and someone finally asked her why she went in for the hug even though she didn’t know Seinfeld. She spoke to Sirius XM Hits 1 on Thursday about the incident and displayed a healthy amount of self-awareness and ability to poke fun at herself.
"I felt like I was five years old,” she said during the radio interview. “I instantly was like, 'Oh, fuck me!' And I like, somehow ended up in my very own episode — mini-episode — of Seinfeld for like five seconds."
“I’ve seen every episode a thousand times,” she added. “I used to carry the whole season package with me everywhere on my carry-on. Like DVDs. That's why I was trying to attack him, yes! That’s why I wanted a hug so hard.”
But she’s not still hurting or embarrassed about the incident. "I should have known better,” she admits. “I’ve seen the hugging episode [of Seinfeld]! That was my fault, that was my fault."
We’re glad that Kesha isn’t hung up on the whole thing, because it’s such a perfectly cringey moment that we don’t anticipate losing interest in it anytime soon.
