Robin Roberts has had a number of special moments throughout her decades-long career, but one highlight almost didn’t come to fruition. During an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show Monday, the Good Morning America anchor revealed that she almost turned down interviewing former President Obama in 2012 over fears she would be outed.
Opening up about the interview with DeGeneres, Roberts revealed that she was initially reluctant to take on the interview after she was told there was a possibility Obama was going to announce a shift in his stance on marriage equality at the time. Roberts noted that she “had not been public yet about being gay,” adding that she “was afraid that I might be outed, that people might wonder. ‘Why is she the one interviewing the president when he’s making this change in his stance?’” Roberts, however, ultimately decided to do the interview, telling DeGeneres she made the decision to move forward with it after considering how many people could be impacted by it.
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“And then it was kinda like a scene out of ‘Moonstruck.’ Slap! … Snap out of it!” Roberts said. “You know, ‘Robin what are you thinking? It’s not about you. This man is going to impact countless lives.’ And it was at that moment that I said, ‘I’m going to stop letting fear keep me from the things that I want to do.’”
A year after the interview, Roberts came out in a Facebook post in 2013, officially making her relationship with long-time girlfriend Amber Laign public. Laign, a licensed massage therapist, and Robert first met back in 2005 after mutual friends set them up on a blind date, with Roberts in her memoir, Everybody’s Got Something, that she “liked the fact that she had no idea who I was.”
Roberts announced in February of this year that Laign was diagnosed with breast cancer late last year and underwent surgery in January. Although Laign began chemotherapy, Roberts, a breast cancer survivor, shared earlier in April that her girlfriend suspended her breast cancer treatments after experiencing “complications” from chemotherapy, though she added that Laign’s “prognosis is still very good.” During her Monday appearance, Roberts further opened up about Laign’s diagnosis, telling DeGeneres, “I haven’t talked about it much, but with you, I will,” adding that Laign is “doing well, which is great.”
