Bobby Brown’s ‘Today Show’ Interview With Matt Lauer About Whitney Houston

Robbie Daw | May 2, 2012 7:47 am

Bobby Brown first learned of his ex-wife Whitney Houston‘s death in February from Ralph Tresvant, one of his New Edition bandmates. “He just pulled me outside and said, you know, I just heard that Whitney had just passed,” Brown told Matt Lauer during their Today Show interview. “I immediately got on the phone and I called my daughter.” Brown said that once he received confirmation that Whitney was indeed gone, he began to cry. “You never expect someone that’s close to you to just die.”

Houston’s ex maintained that the “I Will Always Love You” seemed to be on a clean path before her death, and says he was hurt when he heard an autopsy report showed cocaine was found in her system. “Me being off narcotics for the last seven years… I didn’t know that she was struggling with it still.”

Lauer asked Brown how he responds to the general assumption that Houston’s life went downhill after she met her onetime husband. With a shake of his head, Brown replied, “It makes me feel terrible, but I know differently. I think if anyone ever knew us, if anybody ever spent time around us instead of looking through the bubble, they would know how we felt about each other.”

Brown goes on to say that the 2005 Bravo reality series they both starred in, Being Bobby Brown, was a wake-up call for the two singers, as it displayed how much their drug use had affected their lives.

“I didn’t get high [on narcotics] before I met Whitney,” Brown said to Lauer, refuting claims that he got her hooked on drugs. “I smoked weed. I drank beer. But, no — I wasn’t the one that got Whitney on drugs.”

Houston’s ex added that drugs were a part of Whitney’s life “way before” the two of them met. “I worried about when we first got together until I tried it,” he said. “And when I tried it, for some reason I have an addictive personality. It’s unexplainable. But no, I wasn’t the one that got her addicted to drugs, or I’m not the reason she’s gone.”

As the first part of Matt Lauer’s interview with Bobby Brown wound down (part two airs tomorrow), the singer said that he spent 14 “beautiful” years with Whitney, and claimed that’s part of some kind of “revisionist history,” as Lauer put it.

What do you think of Bobby Brown’s words about his ex-wife Whitney? Let us know below, or by hitting us up on Facebook and Twitter.