Gayle King space trip: TV host explains her scared face before Blue Origin flight

Gayle King has addressed footage of her looking “petrified” ahead of boarding a Blue Origin flight to space with a star-studded all-female group.

The American TV host, 70, was filmed walking onto the rocket looking forlorn and meekly ringing the bell as each member of her group had done before boarding the spacecraft.

Watch the video above.

The CBS News broadcaster was joined by Katy Perry and Jeff Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sánchez for the flight on Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket.

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While the other women in the group were smiling widely and looked excited for the adventure, King couldn’t hide her nerves and the footage quickly went viral.

“Gayle’s Face: ‘Who talked me into this s**t?'” one X follower commented.

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“Gayle, please blink 3x if you are being held against your will,” another said.

“Gayle looks petrified,” another said.

“Gayle looks like she’s been through it,” added another.

“Gayle King is all of us on a Monday,” another said.

King later addressed the footage, explaining at that moment she was “so afraid”.

“I just wanted to get into my seat because I just wanted to let the training kick in,” she said at a news conference after the short flight.

“I just wanted to get inside the capsule and sit down.

“So the process of walking up there was a little daunting for me.”

She said a friend from Germany sent her an encouraging text to try and calm her nerves, telling King once she was up there, “You’re going to feel like it’s sex with the Gods”.

“Well, [I’ve] never had sex with a god to my knowledge, so thank you for the visual,” she continued.

“I didn’t think that, but I did think that with all the stuff that you hear about the blackness and the blues — it’s the neon blue [up in space], and it’s still and it’s quiet and you’re all feeling this experience together. I know I will never forget it.”

Footage of King in space with the group was soon posted and she looked ecstatic, enthusiastically joining in on their antics which included joining hands and declaring: “Taking up space!”

Following the trip to space, King said she “walked out of there thinking, ‘Gosh, I can do anything'”.

“I’m so proud of us, I really am proud of me because I never in a gazillion years thought I could do this,” she added.

The Blue Origin flight took off from West Texas on April 14 with the group on board which included King, Perry and Sánchez as well as Aisha Bowe, a former NASA rocket scientist, Amanda Nguyen, a bioastronautics research scientist and Kerianne Flynn, a movie producer.

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King’s long-time friend Oprah Winfrey joined the crowd watching the rocket blast into space alongside Khloé Kardashian.

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The flight spanned 10-minutes with the crew flying just above the Kármán line, an invisible boundary at an altitude of 99 kms that is widely accepted as the edge of space.

While in space, Perry sang What a Wonderful World and held up a daisy flower in a nod to her daughter Daisy, four, whom she shares with partner Orlando Bloom.

“Daisies are common flowers, but they grow through any condition,” Perry said after the flight.

“They are resilient. They are powerful. They are strong.”

Perry was seen kissing the ground following the group’s return to Earth.

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