In an interview with People, singer Elle King is calling her father’s apology a “double negative.”
After appearing on Bunnie Xo’s podcast on Aug. 12, King had several things to say about her dad, actor Rob Schneider.
The conversation began when Bonnie Xo told King that Schneider was her celebrity crush and King didn’t hold back while talking about what it was like growing up with Schneider as a father.
“I disagree with a lot of the things that he says,” King said, explaining she wasn’t very close with her dad while growing up and didn’t formed a connection with him until she “was much, much older.”
King recalled spending a lot of time on the sets of his movies and how she would often get “lost in the shuffle” during that time.
Never being able to find common ground, at the end of the interview, King admitted she doesn’t plan on reconciling her relationship with her dad, adding that she “doesn’t want to be associated” with him any more in any way.
“He’s just not nice,” the singer said. “You can want someone to change so much. You can’t control anyone else’s actions and you can’t control people’s feelings. All you can control is how you react and what you do with your feelings.”
Two days after the podcast was published, Schneider appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show on Aug. 14. At the start of the show, he issued a public apology to King.
“I want to just tell my daughter, Elle, I love you,” he said while looking directly at the camera. “And I wish I was the father in my 20s that you needed. Clearly, I wasn’t and I hope you can forgive me for my shortcomings.”
“I love you completely. I love you entirely,” Schneider continued. “And I just want you to be well and happy with you and your beautiful baby, Lucky.”
“I wish you the best, I feel terrible, and I just want you to know I don’t take anything you say personally,” he concluded.
When Carlson asked Schneider how hard it was not to “attack back” after his daughter “attacked” him, the actor laughed saying, “I just want her to heal from this.”
Now in an interview with People, King admitted that she didn’t expect the comments she made about her father to get as much attention as they did.
“I was just speaking about my childhood and about my truth. I was not trying to hurt him,” she told People.
“A lot of people said, ‘How could she say that about her family?’ and ‘Everything needs to be behind closed doors.’ No, it doesn’t,” King continued. “Sometimes you have to just say things and get them off your chest so that you don’t have to carry it for the rest of your life.”
When asked if she was able to accept her dad’s apology, she said, “Ultimately, I think an apology on Tucker Carlson is like a double negative, right? Means nothing.”
But despite the public back and forth, King said one good thing came from it.
“What I will say is the best thing that came from that is that my incredible LGBTQ+ community knows that they have an ally in me,” the singer told People.