The Lady Kanye of the Oscars, Elinor Burkett, was on Joy Behar’s CNN show on Tuesday to give her side of the story. Burkett provided one of the few interesting moments in an otherwise dreary ceremony when she jumped onto the stage when the director of the winning Documentary Short, Music by Prudence, was giving his acceptance speech. Brassy rough-voiced Burkett jumped on the stage and said “the man never lets the woman talk. Isn’t that just the classic thing? In a world in which most of us are told… that we can’t, Liyana, the [disabled] band behind this film, teaches us that we’re wrong. Against all odds they did, so we can.” She then name-checked some of the subjects of the film and the two pointed out that Prudence, the disabled subject of the film, was in the audience.

When asked what she was thinking when she interrupted the speech, Burkett said she realized they only had 45 seconds and said that she thought “if I don’t make it to that stage within 3 seconds he’s not going to thank the band, he’s only going to talk about himself.” Joy added “that’s what he did,” and Burkett agreed.

Burkett pointed out that she’s a producer of the film and that her name is on the Oscar. There’s a whole backstory there, as Burkett and the director she interrupted, Roger Ross Williams, have been fighting over creative direction. Williams says that Burkett doesn’t deserve credit for the film after she removed herself from the project. He claimed “I own the film. She has no claim whatsoever. She has nothing to do with the movie. She just ambushed me. I was sort of in shock.” Burkett counters that she got an Oscar with her name on it and had every right to speak. (Salon.com has much more from both sides if you’re interested.)

Turns out the woman who rushed the stage was Music By Prudence producer Elinor Burkett, whose name had also been called for the award. She tells EW that the confusion began because Williams had refused to discuss beforehand which one of them should speak on stage if they won. (The two aren’t on speaking terms due to a creative conflict over the film.) She also claims she only stepped in because he was neglecting to thank the film’s main subjects, the Zimbabwean band Liyana. And she had a few things to say about being compared to a certain mic-grabbing rapper:

“It’s ridiculous. I won an Oscar. Kanye West injected himself onto the stage where he didn’t belong. I don’t know why everyone is acting like I didn’t have the right to be there. My name was called, and I went up because because I won an Oscar. And that’s the only thing I kind of resent, is people acting like I didn’t get an Oscar. It’s really demeaning and denigrating to somebody who did all the work. The Producer’s Guild certified me as the producer. HBO certified me as the producer. There’s this assumption that [Roger] had more of a right to speak than I did. His Oscar is not bigger than my Oscar.“

[From EW]

Larry King gave Williams a platform for making his full Oscars acceptance speech, and Burkett was right – he didn’t thank the band or mention the message of the film and focused on all the people who made the achievement possible for him. He did go on to talk about Prudence and the band, but that was well after his 45 seconds would have expired and you can kind of tell that was an afterthought. I can’t hate on Lady Kanye and I have to hand it to her that she made an otherwise boring night kind of interesting. You can easily see how she would have a falling out with someone over a project, though. I doubt she’s easy to work with.