In an interview with Gayle King that recently went viral, Julia Roberts revealed that the late civil rights heroes Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King paid for her birth.
Zara Rahim, a former strategic advisor for Barack Obama, posted a video on Twitter commemorating Roberts’ birthday on Friday, highlighting the King family’s impact on her life.
—Zara Rahim (@ZaraRahim)
October 28, 2022
In September, 55-year-old Julia Roberts sat down with Gayle King at an HISTORYTalks event in Washington, D.C., where she disclosed that the King family stepped in when her parents “could not afford to pay the hospital bill.”
Roberts stated, “The King family paid my hospital bill: Martin Luther King and Coretta.” She subsequently said, “They rescued us from a bind.”
Roberts informed Gayle that before her birth, her parents, Walter and Betty Lou Roberts, owned the Actors and Writers Workshop in Atlanta, Georgia, and welcomed the King children at a period when black students were not permitted to integrate into white schools.
“One day Coretta Scott King contacted my mother and asked if her children could attend the school since it was difficult to find a place that would accept them, and my mother responded, ‘Sure, come on over,’” Roberts said.
After their children enrolled in the school, the families became friends, according to Roberts.
A member of the Ku Klux Klan blew up a car in front of the school, according to an article written by Phillip Depoy and published in Arts ATL, an Atlanta-based art newspaper. Depoy writes that the terrorist attack was a reaction to Yolanda King, King’s first-born child, being played as the love interest of a white counterpart.
During the conversation, Gayle praised the Roberts family for their contribution to the integration of the Atlanta theater community during a period of intensified racial injustice.
Gayle stated, “In the 1960s, you didn’t see tiny Black children mingling with little white children in an acting school, and your parents were like ‘come on in.’ I think that’s incredible, and it sort of shapes who you are.”
Social media users discussed Robert’s admission on Twitter. A Twitter user stated, “The fact that Martin Luther King Jr. paid for her birth remains a little-known fact that disturbs me.”
—almost wife like (@turnandstomp)
October 22, 2022
Roberts has already spoken out against racial injustice. In a 1990 interview with Rolling Stone, Roberts recalled the time she spent filming “Sleeping with the Enemy” in Abbeville, South Carolina, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Roberts told the site that the area was “horrendously racist” and a “living hell” after her Black acquaintance was refused service at a restaurant.
After the incident, the citizens of Abbeville donated funds to oppose Roberts’ remarks in an advertisement in Variety. “Pretty Girl? Quite Low, “The advertisement appeared in the Spartanburg Herald-Journal.
Roberts later issued a clarification to the Anderson Independent-Mail on her remarks.
“I was startled to learn that this kind of treatment still occurs in the United States in the 1990s, whether in the South or elsewhere,” she told the Orlando Sentinel.