If you thought Lifetime’s “Surviving R. Kelly” documentary was scathing, get ready for part two, “Surviving R. Kelly Part II: The Reckoning.”
A new trailer for part two was released on Wednesday that shows an update to new developments in the R. Kelly saga. Testimonies of people who weren’t featured in the first documentary are teased.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the six-hour series will run for two hours a night for three consecutive nights starting on Thursday, Jan. 3, and ending on Saturday, Jan. 5. Interviews include industry insiders Mathew Knowles, Jimmy Maynes, and Damon Dash, who dated one of R. Kelly’s alleged victims, the late Aaliyah. Other interviewees include W. Kamau Bell, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Angela Yee, Gloria Allred and State’s Attorney for Cook Country Kimberly M. Foxx.
Alleged victims Asante McGee and Kitti James will also return to share more details about their stories including threats they’ve received since the first documentary aired earlier this year. The parents of one of R. Kelly’s current girlfriends Joycelyn Savage will also return to explain their efforts at ending their daughter’s relationship to R. Kelly.
Part two will air while the disgraced singer currently awaits his 2020 trial for multiple charges of sexual abuse and misconduct in a Chicago correctional center. Charges continue to stack up against the Grammy award winner, including one last week that charged him with bribery for getting a fake ID made for an unnamed female in 1994, a day before his marriage to a then 15-year-old Aaliyah.
The first “Surviving R. Kelly” was a six-part series that premiered on Lifetime Jan. 3 to Jan. 5. It was nominated for a Primetime Emmy and won a Critic’s Choice Award for the nationwide debates it raised surrounding the music industry’s decades-long silence over R. Kelly, despite his previous charges of child pornography.
The #MuteRKelly boycott led to the singer being dropped from his label and ostracized from the music industry. Seven weeks after the documentary aired, R. Kelly was arrested and charged with 10 felony counts of aggravated sexual assault involving four alleged victims.
