14 DAY TRIAL // It turns out that Oksana Grigorieva won’t do an interview with Oprah Winfrey to talk about her fall-out with ex Mel Gibson, as previously reported: but at least she’s talking to People magazine about it.
The latest issue of the mag is dedicated to the fight against bullying and violence in general; given Oksana’s claims, it’s little wonder she’s also included in it.
This is Oksana’s first interview since breaking up with the actor / director and, as expected, the first time she publicly talks about life with him in the final months, his alleged attacks on her and, of course, those infamous tapes.
According to a preview in People, Oksana defends herself against claims she’s out to get rich off Gibson by shaming him publicly and, most importantly, by selling the tapes she made of him to the media.
Claims that she’s been extorting him have also been made against her (in the court of law, no less) but she’s denying that too: she never even imagined the tapes could make her money.
“In a wide-ranging interview with People, Grigorieva, 40, talks in detail about the argument during which she says Gibson, 54, hit her while she was holding their baby, Lucia,” People writes.
Though the actor says he never laid a hand on her and that, on that particular occasion, he was only trying to stop her from shaking Lucia, Oksana says she feared for her life.
“I thought he would kill me,” she says. This is also the reason why she made the tapes: because she wanted actual proof of how Mel was endangering her life, but not because she ever wanted the tapes to go public.
“The Russian-born musician says Gibson often flew into jealous rages, talked about suicide and once brandished a gun in front of her,” People writes.
“She also discusses why she decided to tape Gibson’s angry phone calls. ‘I needed to document his threats,’ says Grigorieva, who denies she leaked the tapes. She also refutes Gibson’s claim that she used the tapes to extort him,” the magazine further says in a preview for the issue.
Moreover, Oksana is not angry at Gibson and she’s certainly not spiteful for how things ended between them, she says in the same interview.
For the sake of their daughter, she is willing to put everything behind her – but only on the condition that Gibson owns up to his past mistakes and “takes responsibility for what he’s done.”