Brittney Griner is opening up about the harrowing experience she had in Russia, from her February 2022 arrest to her nine-year prison sentence before her December 2022 release.
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On May 1, viewers will be able to hear for the first time, a detailed first-hand account of the experiences, thoughts, and trauma suffered by the WNBA star who spent 10 months detained in a Russian prison over a minuscule amount of cannabis oil she was caught with at a Moscow airport.
ABC News recently released a trailer of the 33-year-old’s appearance on Good Morning America and a special edition of 20/20.
“I was just so scared for everything because there’s so much unknown,” Griner told GMA co-anchor Robin Roberts.
The trailer shows Roberts asking Griner—who pleaded guilty to drug charges in July 2022, two months after the U.S. classified her as “wrongfully detained“—about what she felt on Feb. 15, 2022, at the moment she was instructed to reach into her bag at the Russian airport and she felt the cartridges of hashish oil in her luggage.
“My life is over right here,” Griner said of her thoughts in that moment.
According to PEOPLE, viewers will also hear Griner’s recollection of conditions she faced while inside Russia’s infamous penal colony, which she describes as making her feel “less than a human.” Those conditions, according to Griner, included a prison mattress that “had a huge blood stain on it” and that she was made to live with “no soap,” and “no toilet paper.”
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The nine-time WNBA All-Star and two-time Olympic gold medalist also talked to Robers about experiencing suicidal thoughts and actually having a readily available knife that would help her carry out those suicidal impulses.
The 20/20 special, titled “Prisoner in Russia: The Brittney Griner Interview,” will also feature interviews with Griner’s wife Cherelle Griner, her agent Lindsay Kagawa Colas, and Special Presidential Envoy of Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens, and it will air just six days before the May 7 release of her memoir revolving around her detainment in Russia, titled Coming Home.
