Actress Julia Roberts and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. have a totally unlikely connection. Julia just revealed in an interview with Gayle King that MLK Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King, actually paid for her birth. Yes, really!
“The King family paid for my hospital bill … Martin Luther King and Coretta,” Roberts told Gayle King, according to Insider.
The chat was part of a series for The History Channel. Zara Rahim, a former strategic adviser to President Barack Obama, tweeted the interview clip in honor of Julia's birthday and it quickly went viral. People just couldn't get over the story.
As it turns out, Julia's parents, Walter and Betty Lou Roberts, ran the Actors and Writers Workshop in Atlanta. During that time, they became close with the King family.
“One day Coretta called my mother and asked if her kids could be part of the school because they were having a hard time finding a place that would accept her kids,” she said. “My mom was like, ‘Sure, come on over,’ and so they all just became friends.”
Of course, that didn't go over well. When the eldest King daughter was cast in a play where she kissed a white actor, the KKK blew up a car outside the school.
Still, the families remained close. And when Julia was born, she said the Kings helped her parents "out of a jam" in a big way. On October 28, 1967, Julia's parents couldn't afford the hospital bill for her birth. She said the Kings stepped up to pay it.
To see what else Julia had to say about the little-known fact, watch the now-viral video.
