Whitney Houston’s Family Interviewed For Oprah’s Next Chapter
March 12, 2012 by Hollywoodite
The interview with Whitney Houston’s family for Oprah’s Next Chapter aired this weekend. Included are a few excerpts and video clips from the interview.
Most of the focus is on Houston’s daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, sole heiress to the estate, who reportedly wants to change her name to Kristina Houston in attempts to distance herself from her father (he claims, incidentally, that their relationship is “wonderful”).
Asked how she’s holding up after her mother’s death, Brown, 19, replied: “I’m doing as good as I possibly can.”
Then Brown elaborated that she still feels her mother’s presence: “She’s always with me. Her spirit is strong, it’s a strong spirit. I can hear her voice in spirit talking to me [saying] ‘I’m right here, I’ve got you.’ I can always feel her with me. I feel her pass through me all the time… She always asked me, ‘Do you need me?’ And I caught myself, out of nowhere, I didn’t even know I said it, I said, ‘I’ll always need you.’ It comes in waves: One moment I can be happy and laughing, but then it comes over me. Sometimes, it’s so surreal. I still walk into the house like, ‘Mom?’ But I’ve accepted it.”
“The very last day, it was so early in the morning I went to go and get her I was like, ‘Will you come and lay down with me?’” Brown recalled. “She was rubbing my head, and I slept in her arms all day and all night long.”
“[I hope] to carry on the legacy,” as a singer and actress, claims Brown. “I still have a voice. Yeah, we are going to do the singing thing, we are going to do the singing and the acting. It’s a lot of pressure, but [mom] prepared me for it.”
Houston’s sister-in-law, Patricia Houston, married to Gary Houston, also gave an interview.
Recalling that she went to Houston’s hotel room shortly after the singer had been found dead: “I headed down the hallway… I heard screaming. I saw [Whitney’s] makeup artist [Mary] drop to her knees and I knew something was wrong. I was just numb. I walked. I told her to dial 911. I got close, and I turned the corner, Mary was at the door, and she is screaming ‘Oh my God!’ I told her to stop and I said, ‘Calm down.’ When I got into the room I saw [security guard] Ray trying to revive her to the point of exhaustion. I said, ‘Ray!’ the paramedics were coming in at that point. I said, ‘Ray let it go.’ He said, ‘I tried.’ He was so out of breath, I felt so badly for him.”
Asked about the circumstances of the death and how Houston ended up on the bath, she continued: “I don’t know how she got there, [paramedics] had to pull her out of the tub and were trying to revive her… I saw them cover her up and I knew that was it. I knew that was it. Just looking at her and watching that I still could not believe it I could not believe it.”
Asked whether she anticipated the premature death of her sister-in-law, she continued: “If things hadn’t changed… but things had, were, changing. Things were really changing with her. Very much so… not this soon, I never thought anything like this would happen.”
