Former BET CEO Debra Lee is telling all in her new memoir, I Am Debra Lee, where she reveals that she and BET founder Bob Johnson had an intimate affair while both were married to other people.
Lee spoke to Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts about the ordeal, first calling Johnson a “mentor” who is undoubtedly responsible for much of her success before detailing the timeline of their relationship.
“We did have a relationship while we were both married, we ended up both divorced, and then people knew about the relationship, the company knew, the public, we started going places together.
“The downfall of a relationship like that is if you want to get out of it,” she added. “I wanted to break up, I saw that it wasn’t a longterm relationship, and my job and my career was held over my head.”
“If you want to break up with me, you can leave tomorrow,” Lee claims Johnson told her after she attempted call it quits. “That was 20 years into my career at BET, so I would’ve lost everything.”
In a separate interview with The Washington Post, Lee doubled-down on her accusations of Johnson threatening her career if she left him.
“Oh yeah, I was told that many times,” she explained. “It’s like, ‘Okay, if you’re going to break up with me, let’s get on the phone and tell people you are leaving right now.’ And as a working mother, how does one recover from something like that? How does one say, ‘The man I worked for for 20 years won’t give me a recommendation and fired me because we were in a relationship and now it’s over.’”
Johnson, 76, would exit BET for good in 2005, with Lee, 68, becoming Chairman and CEO of the network until 2018.
Lee also felt the need to explain why she’s chosen to speak on the matter in her new book, telling The Post, “We’ve heard so much about the guys who come to the door with their robe open and they come out naked. That wasn’t the kind of experience I had. … It turned into a situation where my job was at issue anytime I thought about breaking up the relationship. That’s very much sexual harassment, but it’s a different kind of sexual harassment. I wanted young women to know that if you’re in a relationship that’s uneven in terms of the power structure, that it can turn abusive.”
Johnson went on to marry Lauren Wooden in 2016 in a wedding officiated by Judge Greg Mathis, but the couple filed for divorce just four years later.
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