BBC Dad Finally Speaks Up About That Hilarious Interview

BBC dad surfaces and we love his family even more!

The family at the center of the interview seen around the world has finally surfaced. After taking a few days to digest the fact that his interview with the BBC “turned my family into YouTube stars,” Robert Kelly and his family decided to set the record straight with The Wall Street Journal. His original BBC interview has been dissected thousands of times in articles and social media posts, stirring debate but mostly just bringing lot of parents together to say, “BEEN THERE, MAN.”

Kelly, an expert on East Asian affairs, was preparing to give a live video interview last week from his home in South Korea. As many work-from-home parents can relate to, he forgot to lock his office door and began a Skype call. Only his call was broadcast live on air with the BBC. “It’s a comedy of errors,” Mr. Kelly told The Wall Street Journal.

Soon after the interview began, his daughter Marion came barreling into the room. “She was in a hippity-hoppity mood that day because of the school party,” said Mr. Kelly, an associate professor of political science. Let me be clear, Mr. Kelly, we ALL hope to enter a room like Marion someday.

Mr. Kelly describes his reaction as a mixture of “surprise, embarrassment and amusement but also love and affection.” The couple says they weren’t upset at all about the situation and did not get angry with the children. I mean, why would they? The kids were being kids. Very adorable kids, we might add.

“My real life punched through the fake cover I had created on television,” he told The New York Times. “This is the kind of thing a lot of working parents can relate to.”

“I mean it was terribly cute,” Mr. Kelly said. “I saw the video like everybody else. My wife did a great job cleaning up a really unanticipated situation as best she possibly could… It was funny. If you watch the tape I was sort of struggling to keep my own laughs down. They’re little kids and that’s how things are,” Kelly explained.

Kelly’s wife, Kim Jung-A described what was going on in her mind when things got real. “Yeah, most of the time he locks the door,” she said through fits of laughter. “I heard she leaving but I couldn’t find them around me and I tried to check the door,” Jung-A said. “It was some chaos for me.” This woman deserves a gold medal in Olympic style response time, second only to their eight month old, James. Who, by the way, was adorable again in this interview.

The best part of all of this was that his wife was actually watching Kelly’s interview on a television screen in another room but because of a time delay, she saw that classic entrance of her daughters a few moments too late. Some things were just meant to be.

In the Journal interview, their kids can be heard screaming in the next room. To this, Kelly stands up to let them in and says, “This is my life, man.”

We feel you, dad. We feel you.