Days after the email exchange, Williams spoke with Pitchfork over the phone about her conversation with Grenell, the Kennedy Center employees who contacted her afterward, and why she hopes the institution will continue booking arts programming. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Pitchfork: Why did you want to reach out to the Kennedy Center to begin with? What were you hoping to gain transparency on?

Yasmin Williams: Several musician friends of mine, along with people who aren’t musicians but attend the Kennedy Center regularly to see shows, have been talking a lot about what direction the Kennedy Center’s going in. This started when the new leadership took over and Trump put himself in charge of the Kennedy Center; a lot of my friends were worried about that for obvious reasons. We just weren’t sure what was really gonna happen. A lot of the articles that I personally have been reading have really conflicting messaging. For example, “This show was canceled by the leadership that Trump appointed to the Kennedy Center,” and then this other article about the same show says, “Oh, well this was canceled before Trump took over.” That’s really conflicting and not really helpful for me in trying to figure out what exactly is going on.

Also, I really care about the Kennedy Center. I’ve seen a lot of shows there; some of the highlights of my life happened there; and I just wanna see the building continue to exist. So I found [Richard Grenell’s] email through [folk musician] Cathy Fink, who was also sending letters and emails to him, and to other people trying to do the same thing, just to figure out what’s going on. Before any of this happened in the email exchange, I had been pretty vocal about artists boycotting because, at that point when the new leadership was announced, a lot of artists were pulling out of their board positions and boycotting or canceling their shows. I remember saying that I didn’t think that was the right thing to do. I thought that artists should continue to play there, mainly because I know a lot of people who work there and their incomes were being really, really negatively impacted from artists canceling shows. The Kennedy Center pays way more in hourly wages to their staff and union workers who freelance there than literally any other venue does in the D.C. area.

Then you reached out to Grenell to ask about the current state of the Kennedy Center. Are the screenshots you shared over Instagram the totality of that exchange?

Yes, they were all there. I shared them in the order in which they were sent, too.

How much time passed between each email? It reads like a quick conversation rather than a days-long correspondence.

I sent my email around 9:23 p.m. on Tuesday, and he responded at, like, 11:00 p.m. that same night. Every email after that was rapid-fire, like responses from him were coming in five minutes or less.

So this actually took place late at night?

Yes, this whole thing took place at night! I was not expecting an answer at all, much less then.

How were you feeling once that final email, the lengthy one where he accuses you of failing to “do your own research,” rolled in from Grenell?

I shared it right after some time had passed and I sent my last email, which was the final email saying that I thought he was being rude and whatever other adjectives I used. I put it on my Instagram stories because I thought it was really shocking and bizarre. I don’t remember being super upset or anything. I just thought people needed to read this exchange in its entirety and deserved to know that this is the person heading up the Kennedy Center. Interim executive director or not, this is who’s running things here. He clearly doesn’t care about the arts, he’s clearly lying in the emails, and he’s clearly unhinged. When I woke up the next morning, it had blown up.

https://pitchfork.com/news/yasmin-williams-on-her-shocking-email-exchange-with-new-kennedy-center-president-hes-clearly-unhinged