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Gossip Girl Actress Chanel Banks Reportedly Found Safe After Going Missing Last Month
Chanel Banks is sharing her perspective.
Less than a week after the actress—who had a three-episode arc on Gossip Girl in 2009—was reported missing by her family, she denied ever going missing and detailed the circumstances surrounding her departure.
“It is a simple explanation,” Chanel told Extra in a Nov. 18 interview. “I had to take myself out of a bad situation and I’m sure a lot of people can relate to that. And what transpired from that, is what you’re seeing in the media now.”
Earlier this month, Chanel was reported missing by her family, with welfare checks to the 36-year-old’s Playa Vista home taking place Nov. 7 and Nov. 8, the LAPD told E! News. At the time, Chanel’s cousin Danielle-Tori Singh had shared that the disappearance was out of character.
And while Danielle-Tori further said that the Blue Bloods alum would not typically go “48 hours” without contacting herself or her mother Judy Kumar, Chanel said that is not the case.
“You’re seeing two people right now, my mother,” she explained in her sit-down, “And my cousin, whom I have not spoken to for 10 years. This is not someone I have a relationship with. We definitely don’t have a sister-sister relationship.”
Indeed, Chanel alleged that she had been actively trying to distance herself from her family members—and had taken a solo trip to Texas for a religious retreat.
“In the past when I’ve tried to get away,” Chanel explained. “This is exactly what happens.”
She continued, “I’ve tried to set boundaries to make myself feel safe and I was met with resistance to say the least.”
Danielle-Tori Singh/Facebook
Of her mother specifically, Chanel added, “This is a woman who has stopped me so many times in my life for things I have worked for since I was a child.”
E! News has reached out to Chanel’s parents and her cousin regarding her recent interview but has not yet heard back.
Meanwhile, Chanel’s husband Carlos Jimenez—has maintained Chanel’s perspective in a statement to E! News as well as in an interview with Extra.
As he told Extra of the time when she was supposedly missing, “I’d been texting Chanel.”
On Nov. 19, Danielle-Tori shared a statement regarding Chanel, clarifying that she had been found, adding in a Facebook post, “she seems happy.”
And Chanel herself indicated as much.
“I’m an adult woman, I don’t have to call my mother every day,” she stressed to Extra. “I’m alive and you’re going to be seeing so much more of me. It feels so good to be here and not be hiding something.”
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