Rihanna on Oprah: Chris Brown not a monster

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Rihanna on Oprah: Chris Brown not a monster

Rihanna wants you to know he's not bad, he's just drawn that way.

Rihanna has told Oprah she felt protective of Chris Brown after he beat her up more than three years ago and was concerned that everyone would think of him as a monster.

RiRi, in a rare emotional TV interview set to air on Sunday detailing her thoughts about the highly publicised 2009 assault, told Oprah that the days and weeks after incident left her confused and ashamed.

"It was embarrassing, it was humiliating," RiRi told Oprah in the interview, excerpts of which were released. "I lost my best friend. Everything I knew switched, switched in a night, and I couldn't control that."

"It was a weird, confusing space to be in. Because as angry as I was—as angry and hurt and betrayed—I just felt like he made that mistake because he needed help. And who's going to help him? Nobody's going to say he needs help. Everybody's going to say he's a monster, without looking at the source. And I was more concerned about him," she added.

Hello, has RiRi been spending too much time under that umbrella?

The image that shocked the pop world.

RiRi, now 24, was left battered and bruised from the beating in LA on the eve of the Grammy Awards in February 2009. Chris Brown, 19 at the time, pleaded guilty to assault and was sentenced to five years probation, community service and domestic violence counseling.

He publicly apologised, but his career and public image took a dive. His career has since recovered, and he won his first Grammy this year for the album FAME. RiRi has rarely opened up emotionally in public about the events of that night.

Oprah, who interviewed RiRi in her Barbados home, said in a promo for Sunday's show that she had started with a fixed idea of RiRi based on her provocative music videos and sexually charged lyrics, but her view quickly changed.

"I thought she was going to be kind of a badass, kind of a hard-edged rocker, pop woman. Nothing could have been further from the truth," Oprah said. The full interview will be broadcast on Oprah's OWN cable network in the US.