Kelly Rowland explains Cannes red carpet incident: “I stood my ground”

Kelly Rowland is explaining why she was upset on the red carpet at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival Tuesday. In an interview with The Associated Press, she chalked up her confrontation with a security guard to a crossed boundary.

“The woman knows what happened. I know what happened. And I have a boundary, and I stand by those boundaries, and that is it,” she explained. “There were other women that attended that carpet who did not quite look like me, and they didn’t get scolded, or pushed off or told to get off.”

“I stood my ground and she felt like she had to stand hers, but I stood my ground and that was it,” she concluded.

For the uninitiated, Kelly made an appearance at the festival to attend the Marcello Mio premiere. While walking up the steps of the Palais des Festivals, a security guard rushing her into the theater stepped on her dress, prompting her to say, “Don’t worry.” But moments later Kelly appeared to be upset, though it’s not clear what prompted it.

“Don’t talk to me like that. Don’t talk to me like that,” Kelly told the woman, per a lip-reading expert who spoke to Page Six. “You’re not my mother. I told you not to talk to me like that.”