Grammy winner Rihanna is opening up about her ex-boyfriend Chris Brown in an emotional interview with Oprah Winfrey.

"Everything I knew switched in a night," Rihanna says about the Feb. 8, 2009, incident in which she and Brown got in a fight that led to his attack. (He later pleaded guilty to assault.)

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In the clip below from Oprah's Next Chapter, the 24-year-old explains why she actually felt protective over Brown at the time.

"It was a weird, confusing space to be in because as angry as I was — angry, hurt and betrayed — I just felt like he made that mistake because he needed help and who's going to help him?" she says. "[I thought] everybody's going to say he's a monster ... and I was more concerned about him."

The emotionally charged interview sees the Umbrella singer Rihanna saying : ‘ 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? ‘

The Barbados native singer Rihanna has told to Oprah Winfrey it was not easy for her to understand or interpret that situation around. And that its not easy to interpret on camera when the whole world is watching.

Also in the Oprah Winfrey’s interview 2012, the singer Rihanna talks freely about her career, her family, the recent death of her grandmother and the price of fame. Winfrey also went to the singer’s old neighborhood in Barbados to gain a better understanding of Rihanna’s past.

American producer Oprah Winfrey has commented : ‘ I went there with my own ideas about who she was, watching the videos and listening to her music. 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. ‘