Julia Roberts says that her parents were close with Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King, revealing that the couple paid for the hospital bill for her birth. She says that her parents struggled to afford the bill at the time.
Roberts says that her parents befriended the Kings while living in Atlanta and running a theater school.
“One day Coretta called my mother and asked if her kids could be part of the school because they were having a hard time finding a place that would accept her kids,” Roberts said during a conversation with Gayle King for A+E Networks and History Channel’s HISTORYTalks. “My mom was like, ‘Sure, come on over,’ and so they all just became friends, and they helped us out of a jam.”
It’s previously been reported that a Ku Klux Klan member once blew up a car outside of the Roberts’ home after they cast King’s daughter, Yolanda, in a role that saw her kiss a white actor.
The actor, Phillip DePoy, recalled the incident while penning an essay for ARTS ATL in 2013. DePoy was 15 years old at the time of the attack.
“A man, a tangential member of the Ku Klux Klan, had seen me kiss Yolanda the day before in the same parking lot,” he wrote. “The Klansman had come around the day before the explosion in order to make trouble. The workshop was offering a free show in the Carver Homes housing project, an exclusively African-American wonderland filled with hammered lives and children with nothing to do. The guy only heckled us the first day, said words that everyone had heard a million times before, finished his case of PBR, and was about to leave when I kissed Yolanda.”
Roberts is currently promoting her new film, Ticket to Paradise, in which she stars opposite George Clooney.
Check out Roberts’ conversation with Gayle King below.
Today is Julia Roberts birthday! 55 years ago MLK and Coretta Scott King paid for her parents hospital bill after she was born. Can’t stop thinking about this since I read it. Here she is talking about it with @GayleKing https://t.co/5HvpNSUIYb pic.twitter.com/147x6d807W
— Zara Rahim (@ZaraRahim) October 28, 2022
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