![]() ![]() Lindsay Peoples: Welcome to In Her Shoes. ![]() You can also read the full transcript below. To hear more about Lee’s time at BET, from navigating an abusive relationship that spanned both her personal and professional lives to sending a camera crew to film her daughter’s junior-high-school playoff game when she was unable to attend herself, listen and subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen below. If we put it on BET,” she recalls, “they would say we were destroying the race.” After airing the music video for Nelly’s “Tip Drill,” for example, a minister bussed his congregation to Lee’s house every Saturday for seven months to protest explicit content. On Bravo, when they were watching Real Housewives of Atlanta, they could call it a guilty pleasure. “On VH1, they could call it a guilty pleasure. In the book and on the podcast, Lee reflects on her career and the “heavy burden” that comes with “setting the standards for our community.” As the only network at the time targeted to African Americans, the audience had high expectations. ![]() That realization, plus being stuck at home because of the pandemic, spurred Lee to write her memoir, I Am Debra Lee. As in “the only Black person in the room, the only Black woman, sometimes the only woman.” That hadn’t changed much by the time she retired in 2018. “I was a unicorn,” she tells Cut editor-in-chief Lindsay Peoples on this week’s episode of the In Her Shoes podcast. Lee spent 32 years at the network, her last 13 as CEO. The former CEO of BET may not be a household name like Oprah and Shonda Rhimes, but there’s no question she stands shoulder to shoulder with them in shaping Black culture. “It’s still lonely at the top, and especially for Black women.” Debra Lee would know. Photo-Illustration: The Cut Photo: Sharon Suh ![]()
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