Rihanna is speaking out about the night she was attacked by her
then-boyfriend Chris Brown - the night, she says, she "lost my best
friend."
In a tearful conversation with Oprah, the R&B singer
recounts the aftermath of Feb. 8, 2009, when she and Brown got into an
argument while driving home from a pre-Grammy party. Brown was arrested
for assault and pleaded guilty. "Everything I knew switched in a night,
and I couldn't control that," says Rihanna in a clip of the interview, which airs on Oprah's Next Chapter on Sunday (9 p.m. ET/PT, OWN).
Facing
the facts was difficult, especially since she and Brown are constantly
in the public eye, she says. "It's not easy to interpret on camera, not
with the world watching. ...it became a circus."
"It was a weird,
confusing space to be in because as angry as I was - angry, hurt and
betrayed - I just felt like he made that mistake because he needed help,
and who's going to help him?" she says. "Nobody's going to say he needs
help - everybody's going to say he's a monster, without looking at the
source ...and I was more concerned about him."
USA Today