Naomi Campbell: ‘I Was Attacked In Paris’ And Sympathize With Kim Kardashian
Naomi Campbell was attacked in Paris according to an interview she gave on The Wendy Williams Show Thursday.
Campbell’s account was reminiscent, though not nearly as dramatic, of reports of Kim Kardashian getting robbed at gunpoint in her hotel in the City of Lights last year.
Campbell related her story to Kardashian’s and said she sympathizes with the Keeping Up with the Kardashians star.
“I sympathize with her a lot because — I kept mine on the down low — but in 2012, I was attacked in Paris,” Naomi Campbell said in the interview, according to quotes published in an Us Weekly article.
“They followed me from the airport. They attacked me. They opened my car door and said, ‘Naomi Campbell, we’re going to kill you.’ I didn’t make it so public. I didn’t want it to be. I think there’s a picture of me in a wheelchair at the time.”
Campbell said she was attacked in 2012 during a “quick trip” from Switzerland to Paris to visit her “lovely papa,” a reference to fashion designer Azzedine Alaia who has been a longtime friend and mentor. Because of the impromptu nature of the flight, Campbell did not have her usual security guards or driver with her.
Naomi Campbell says she “sympathizes” with Kim Kardashian, because she was also attacked in Paris: https://t.co/Jv9pIcKsuI pic.twitter.com/d5diuJkK5U
— Us Weekly (@usweekly) January 5, 2017
The supermodel and Empire actress recalled feeling uncomfortable as soon as she got into the car at the airport on the day she was attacked.
“[I]t was weird because he had the window rolled down… It was freezing cold in November,” Campbell said in the interview. “I was like, ‘Wait a minute! This is weird.'”
Campbell had planned on stopping by a drugstore on her way to Alaia’s home but changed her mind after he called urging her to hurry over for dinner.
“Thank God [the incident] was outside Azzedine Alaia’s shop, because that’s where the entrance is to get into the house,” Campbell said in The Wendy Williams Show interview. “[My friends] came out and saved me, basically. In the interim, you decide in a very split moment — I don’t know if I’d ever do this again in hindsight — ‘Am I going to let this guy take my bag with all my passports or am I going to fight for it?’ My decision was, ‘I am not letting my bag go.'”
Naomi Campbell said she ran into Kim Kardashian at the Hermes in Paris just a couple of days prior to Kardashian being attacked. She defended the reality TV star against allegations that she had made up or staged the robbery and suggested that such incidents happen more often than the public realizes.
“They opened my car door and said, ‘Naomi Campbell, we’re going to kill you,'” Campbell said https://t.co/siW7DQpXWX
— NBC Los Angeles (@NBCLA) January 5, 2017
“I very much sympathize with [Kardashian]. I felt for her right away,” Campbell said, according to Us Weekly. “I hated hearing these stories that it wasn’t true. It was absolutely true, and it happened to me and it’s happened to a few other people that I’m not at liberty to say, but are well known also.”
Celebrity gossip websites like Media Take Out had published articles saying that Kardashian had made up the story, perhaps to get insurance money for the stolen jewels to help alleviate Kardashian and husband Kanye West’s supposed money troubles, according to the rumors and speculations. However, as CNN Money reported, Media Take Out retracted its story after Kardashian filed a libel suit against the website and its founder, Fred Mwangaguhunga.
Kardashian was bound and gagged during the robbery, and held at gunpoint along with a hotel concierge. Us Weekly reports that the thieves stole jewels from Kardashian that were valued at up to $10 million. Kardashian subsequently filed an insurance claim for $5.6 million for the lost jewels, according to CNN Money.
The attack on Naomi Campbell was nowhere nearly as long of an ordeal as what Kardashian went though, but it was clearly traumatic.
[Featured Image by Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images]
