Iyanla Vanzant Didn’t Want to Bring R. Kelly on ‘Fix My Life’
Iyanla Vanzant has been changing peoples’ lives for decades and helped them become better versions of themselves. Her popular OWN show Iyanla: Fix My Life takes viewers into the lives of her guests — which range from everyday people to A-list celebrities — as she helps them make positive changes to their lives.
Iyanla Vanzant has brought celebrities on ‘Fix My Life’ before
Many episodes of Iyanla: Fix My Life feature regular people who reach out to Vanzant in need of her help. But Vanzant has also welcomed plenty of celebrities onto her show and worked with them to varying degrees of success.
Rapper DMX, for example, felt that going on Iyanla: Fix My Life made his relationship with his son (and his public image) worse rather than better. Former Real Housewives of Atlanta star Sheree Whitfield felt a similar way and that Vanzant’s questions and methods did more harm than good.
R. Kelly reached out to Iyanla Vanzant to do ‘Fix My Life’
In a 2019 interview on The Rickey Smiley Morning Show, Vanzant discussed one celebrity who was in need of her help: R. Kelly.
Kelly actually reached out to Vanzant first, but Vanzant wasn’t convinced that he was ready to make a change. “He did reach out to us, but he’s not ready,” she said bluntly.
Iyanla Vanzant turned down R. Kelly for ‘Fix My Life’
Vanzant went on to say that she turned down his request because he wanted to control the process — and how it was all portrayed on camera.
“You can’t go into the surgical suite telling the surgeon how to do the operation, and that’s how he came at us,” Vanzant told the hosts. “He wanted to tell us how to do it.”
Vanzant said Kelly and his team weren’t accommodating from the beginning. To work with Kelly, she would’ve had to move the entire production of her show to Chicago. “First of all, he wouldn’t come to us; we had to go to him,” Vanzant chuckled.
Vanzant also revealed that there was one preliminary part of the process that he didn’t do. “All of our guests fill out a very extensive application, and he couldn’t get his done,” she said.
Ultimately, Vanzant believed that Kelly — like everyone else in the world — is responsible for his own destiny, and he wasn’t fully committed to righting his wrongs and atoning for his transgressions.
“Every single guest — even the ones that leave — have to be ready, have to be willing, have to have the capacity — the capacity to hear, the capacity and the willingness to shift, the capacity and the willingness to see it differently,” Vanzant said honestly. “He didn’t have the willingness or the capacity.”
