Rowland explained what happened during her apparent dispute with a female security guard at the film festival.
Kelly Rowland is addressing the tense moment between her and a security guard that was caught on camera Tuesday at the Cannes Film Festival.
During a brief interview with The Associated Press on Thursday, the singer explained why she made a point of standing up for herself at the premiere of the French-Italian comedy “Marcello Mio,” when she appeared to clash with an usher.
“The woman knows what happened. I know what happened,” Rowland said as she headed to the celebrity-studded amfAR Gala wearing a chic chartreuse ensemble by designer Gaurav Gupta. “And I have a boundary, and I stand by those boundaries. And that is it.”
In video and photos from the incident, Rowland appeared to scold a festival employee after a team of ushers tried to shoo her away from the red carpet and up the stairs of the iconic Palais des Festivals.
At one point, it looked like the security staffer got into Rowland’s personal space, placing her hand very, very close to the actor’s lower back.
While the “Motivation” singer didn’t detail exactly what went down, she did suggest the incident had something to do with her race.
“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,” the former member of Destiny’s Child told AP.
But Rowland was fine with how things played out, smiling and offering a small shrug as she said, “I stood my ground and she felt like she had to stand hers, but I stood my ground and that was it.”
Cannes is known for having some strict red carpet protocol, including not allowing selfies.
The French film festival also used to have a rigid high heels-only policy for women, but it was reportedly relaxed after a minor backlash at the 2015 event.
