Morgan Wallen did his first sit-down interview since the fallout from the leaked videotape which showed him using the N-word back in February with ABC's Good Morning America on Friday (July 23rd). In the interview, Morgan told Michael Strahan that he used the word out of “ignorance.”
He said, “I was around some of my friends, and we just … we say dumb stuff together, and it was — in our minds, it's playful … that sounds ignorant, but it — that's really where it came from … and it's wrong.”
Morgan said that since the incident he has spoken with the Black Music Action Coalition (BMAC), an advocacy organization formed to address systemic racism within the music business, according to the organization's website. He also said he has had conversations with record executive Kevin Liles, Eric Hutcherson, executive vice president and chief people and inclusion officer at Universal Music Group and gospel singer BeBe Winans.
Morgan said, “I've heard some stories in the initial conversations that I had after that — just how some people are, you know, treated even still today, and I'm just, like, I haven't seen that with my eyes — that pain or that insignificant feeling or whatever it is that it makes you feel . . . I don't know how to put myself in their shoes because I'm not, but I do understand, especially when I say I'm using it playfully or whatever, ignorantly, I understand that that must sound, you know, like, 'He doesn't — he doesn't understand.'”
Morgan also revealed he spend 30 days at a rehab facility in San Diego following the incident.
He has also donated $500,000 to some Black organizations including BMAC.
In other Morgan news, TMZ reports he has sold the house he was living in at the time he was videotaped by neighbors. He sold the four-bedroom, three-bathroom Nashville duplex for $835,000 earlier this month.