What happened at that afterparty at Tristan Thompson's Los Angeles home on Sunday, February 17? Did Jordyn Woods and Tristan Thompson actually hook up? Were they really involved in a months-long affair, as the rumors went? Until today, there were no direct answers to the tornado of questions.
Earlier today, Woods, the longtime best friend of Kylie Jenner and de-facto member of the Kardashian family, went on Red Table Talk with Jada Pinkett Smith to tell her side of the story.
According to Woods, the trouble began when she decided to keep the evening going. She was out at a club with some women friends. "In L.A. culture, when you're young, you go to the bar or club and it ends early, you go to a house after, " she said. It so happened they were headed to the house of Tristan Thompson, Khloé Kardashian's then-boyfriend. Thompson and Kardashian have a daughter, True, together.
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At first, this didn't strike Woods as a problem. "I was like, 'Cool, that's okay.' It feels like a safe environment. I'd rather it be his house than a stranger," Woods said. She clarified that Thompson didn't invite her personally. Rather, she jumped on the bandwagon that was headed towards Thompson's house. "I'm not thinking, 'I shouldn't be here.' And that's the first step where I went wrong," Woods continued.
According to Woods' account, her interactions with Thompson were chaste right until the end of the evening. One by one, she denied the tabloid headlines. "Never once was I giving him a lap dance. Making out with him. Sitting all over him. We're all together, in a group. Never once did we leave the public area to go to a bedroom or bathroom. We're all in plain sight," Woods said.
From there, Pinkett Smith directs the conversation back to the lap dance, which was part of the original set of rumors. To explain the potential confusion, Woods sketched out a diagram of Thompson's living room. Allegedly, Thompson was at the edge of a chair, and Woods was sitting on the arm of the chair. "If you come into the party and you look and you see me sitting on the chair, in my head, this is innocent," Woods said. "There's no way it would look like a lap dance, but I could see why people would say, 'Oh, they're getting cozy.'"
That brings us to the Great Leg Debate of 2019. Woods says her legs were dangling off the edge of the armchair and touching the bottom of Thompson's legs. How does that work? Aside from that touching, Woods says she and Thompson remained chaste during the party. "He didn't take me to a room. It was an innocent time," she said.
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Woods stayed at the party until seven in the morning. For Woods, staying up that late is perfectly normal, and not a sign that she'd spent the night with Thompson. "Two nights before I had been on a partying binge. That wasn't the first place I'd stayed until six in the morning," Woods said. Plus, there were other people at Thompson's that late.
Upon seeing the sun poke through the window, Woods realized it was time to leave. Woods announced to the group she was headed out; her car was waiting outside. Apparently, Thompson offered for her to spend the night instead of leaving. "Are you sure? You can be safe here," Woods recalled Thompson saying. Woods declined.
Here's where the story gets complicated. "On the way out, he did kiss me," Woods said, clarifying that he did kiss her on the lips. What could've compelled Thompson to kiss Woods after a night of chasteness? "Well, I was there until the sun went up," Woods said, trying to guess what Thompson was thinking at the time. Woods said maybe he was trying to "shoot his shot."
Woods also speaks to the presence of alcohol throughout the evening. She was drunk ("not tipsy, drunk") at the time of the kiss. "When alcohol's involved, people make dumb moves and caught up in the moment," she said, trying to explain both her and Thompson's behavior.
Immediately after Thompson kissed her, Woods said she left the house in a daze. "I didn't know how to feel. I was like, 'That didn't just happen.'" Woods' first stop was back home, where she came clean to Kardashian and Jenner about being at Thompson's house – or, partially clean.
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"I was honest about being there, but not about the actions that had taken place. I knew how much turmoil was going on. I was like, 'Let me not throw more fuel to the fire," Woods explained. She didn't tell them about the kiss. Instead, she told Khloé that while there were girls at the party, Thompson "wasn't all over [them]." Woods said she was trying to protect Kardashian by shielding her from the kiss, but she admitted it hurt more people in the process.
After the rumors leaked, Woods apologized to Kardashian over text and over the phone – though Kardashian claimed otherwise. In a tweet sent during the Red Table Talk broadcast, Kardashian accused Woods of being the catalyst for her break-up with Thompson, which occurred over Valentine's Day weekend. In conversation with Pinkett Smith, Woods was adamant that she was not responsible. "I know I'm not the reason that Tristan and Khloé aren't together," she said.
If you're TL; DR about this whole thing: According to Woods, she and Thompson never slept together. They had one chaste kiss at the end of the evening and nothing more. "There has been no communication with Tristan, no relationship over time, no plans on meeting up," Woods said. She has apologized to the Kardashian/Jenners for not telling them about the kiss.
Until Woods spoke her truth, there were only hazy accusations about the events of that evening — and lots of reactions to those accusations. Since the rumors popped up, Woods has moved out Jenner's house, where she had been living. Kim Kardashian unfollowed Woods' social accounts, the ultimate severing of ties in the digital age. Negative media coverage and social media backlash have rendered Woods a recluse. During Red Table Talk, Woods revealed that she and her family have been unable to leave the house.
Woods' testimony reframes the entire media narrative around this debacle so far. The media — Refinery29 included — has devoted tremendous coverage toward a young Black woman who made a mistake. "And not a mistake that deserves crucifixion, but a mistake that should have been dealt with internally," Woods said.
The latest step in this timeline is Woods' appearance on Red Table Talk. We're sure coverage will continue — but Woods' honest, tearful testimony was a cutting reminder of the human cost of gossip.