Arsenio Hall recently shared praise for his friend Kelsea Ballerini ahead of a return to Nashville, saying he would “go to bat for that girl.”
Hall and Ballerini co-hosted a singing series titled Greatest Hits for ABC in 2016, with the former late night legend revealing to PopCulture.com that he remains big fan of the “wonderful new prodigy and writer.”
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“We had a great time, we did collaborations of different groups all summer. She is as talented and as sweet as people probably imagine she is,” he gushed. “She’s one of those people, you know how…there are a lot of people their publicists protect them and they’re really not who you think they are.”
“But the bottom line is I’ll go to bat for that girl. She’s absolutely who you think she is and she hasn’t changed and she’s very much in love with her man,” Hall went on to say. “She’s incredibly talented and as sweet as the day is long.”
Notably, the legendary entertainer also credited Ballerini with his decision to return to the Home of Country Music to do a few stand-up comedy shows at the Zanies comedy club.
“She told me, she says, ‘How come you never come down and do Nashville?’ Because I went down there to do some awards show with her and she says, ‘You got to do this club.’ And that’s how I heard of Zanies, so I’m coming again. And like I always tell Kelsea, she’s like Elvis to me, there’s two seats waiting for her anytime she wants. Because she turned me onto this club.”
Hall noted that he actually has performed at the venue in the past, but that it had been so long he just forgot, explaining, “I’ve been to that club one other time, somebody just reminded me because they took a picture of a picture of me there.”
Interestingly, Hall also recalled that one of things that drew him to the hosting gig on Greatest Hits was so that he could turn down an opportunity with Harvey Weinstein after having a bad first-impression meeting with the former Hollywood executive.
“I got a call from my agent and they said, ‘There is this concept that Harvey Weinstein wants to produce and he wants you to host it,’ ” Hall shared. “It was before all the Weinstein stuff broke real hard like it is now, but I know who he is. I know his history here.”
“I went over one day and I sat in his office and I hung out and when I got home that night I told my agent, ‘I shouldn’t have gone to the meeting. I know who this guy is. I know … he’s not only mean to women, he’s horrible to men. He’s horrible to young people walking around the office.’ He’s just a horrible guy and for the first time I did something that I think a lot of us has to do, I told my agent I’m not going to do the job,” he went on to say.
“As a matter of fact I’ll tell you something I’ve never told anybody, I took that ABC job with Miss Ballerini so that I could tell Harvey I was unavailable for the summer,” Hall then confessed.
Hall will be performing at Zanies on Friday, April 19 and Saturday, April 20, with two shows each night at 7 p.m. and 9:15 p.m. Tickets can be purchased directly from Zanies here.
Photo Credit: Byron Cohen / ABC
