Family behind viral BBC interview finally appears on camera when they’re supposed to

Last week, the world was treated to one of the greatest unscripted comedy moments of all time when a pair of kids stormed into their dad’s BBC News interview like a pair of tiny badasses, prompting their mom to barge into the room like Kramer and quickly whisk them away. You definitely saw it, but here it is again just in case:

The poor interviewee was Korean affairs expert Robert Kelly, and now he and his family have talked to The Wall Street Journal about how it feels to become an overnight viral sensation. The piece is notable for two reasons: One, it includes some videos of Kelly’s children appearing on camera when they’re actually supposed to, and two, the backstory somehow makes the video even funnier.

For starters, Kelly’s wife Kim Jung-A was in the living room excitedly watching her husband’s interview on TV with their kids, and she was even taking a video of the TV with her phone so she could save her own copy of the clip. After a moment, though, she saw her son and daughter on TV and realized they had walked into Kelly’s office, so she quickly ran in to grab them. Meanwhile, while Kelly was wearing a jacket and tie to look professional for his interview, he was also wearing a comfortable pair of jeans under the desk. That means he couldn’t jump out of his chair to grab the kids, because then everyone would see him wearing jeans in a big-time BBC interview.

Also, since this is probably the behind-the-scenes detail that people care about the most, Kelly says he and his wife didn’t get mad at the kids or scold them. “I mean, it was terribly cute,” Kelly said, noting that his wife’s valiant effort to solve the problem was also funny. Now, he and his family are preparing to hold a press conference at the university where he works in South Korea due to the Korean media’s “strong interest in the video.” His goal, apparently, is to get out in front of the thing and establish that it’s okay for people to “laugh at the video as unvarnished but normal family life.”

 
Join the discussion...