Dad Whose Family Hilariously Crashed His BBC Interview Speaks Out: ‘It Was Terribly Cute’

Robert Kelly didn’t expect his
live BBC interview last Friday to make the impact it did.

While the professor was scheduled
to appear on the network via Skype to discuss the impeachment of South Korea’s
president, surprise cameos from his two young children and their frantic mother
turned the segment into an internet sensation.

In their first public remarks
since the clip went viral, Kelly and wife Kim Jung-A told The Wall Street
Journal on Tuesday how their wandering little ones managed to burst into his office and
steal the spotlight. 

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“It’s a comedy of errors,” Kelly said, adding that his reaction to the adorable blunder was “a mixture of sort of surprise and embarrassment and amusement and love and affection.”

One highlight was the confident swagger 4-year-old Marion displayed while making her appearance during Kelly’s broadcast, an attitude which he explained was due to a school party his daughter enjoyed earlier in the day.

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“She was in a hippity-hoppity mood,” he said.

Although Marion got immediate notice on air, her 9-month-old brother upped the ante just moments later when he rolled in with his baby walker. At that point, Kelly said he realized he was officially outnumbered.

“I knew it was over,” he told the paper, admitting that he was trying to stifle laughs throughout the incident.

As if that weren’t enough to derail things, Jung-A slid through the doorway in a frenzied attempt to retrieve both kids. Kelly applauded her quick thinking, but conceded that the entire situation was his fault due to a simple forgotten task. 

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“He usually locks the door,” Jung-A told the paper of her husband, explaining that the children often give up once they discover they’re unable to enter the office while their dad is occupied with work.

This time, however, the circumstances were different.

“And then I saw the door was open. It was chaos for me,” she recalled with a laugh, adding that while similar accidents occur in their household “all the time,” this was the first time anything like that had happened with cameras watching.

As of Tuesday, the video has generated more than 85 million Facebook views – including from Kelly himself. While the couple told the WSJ that the avalanche of media attention has left them overwhelmed, Kelly admitted that he does understand what all the fuss is about.

“I mean, it was terribly cute. I saw the video just like everybody else. It was really funny,” he said.  

— Erin Biglow