ET sat down with Kobe and Emily in Kansas, where Kobe revealed that his best friend Valerie has seen all the criticism about him.
90 Day Fiancé's Emily and Kobe are opening up about all the drama with his close friends that they've experienced in Cameroon on this season of 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After?. ET's Melicia Johnson sat down with the couple in Emily's hometown of Salina, Kansas, where they talked about Kobe's friends disliking Emily and some viewers feeling like Kobe wasn't sticking up for her.
Kobe brought Emily, their children and Emily's parents to Cameroon on this season of 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After?, and there's been no shortage of drama. The two found themselves unexpectedly planning a traditional Cameroonian wedding at the insistence of his father, and Emily immediately experienced friction with Kobe's friends. Kobe's friends are accustomed to more subservient women and called Emily "bossy." The fighting came to a head when Emily invited them to a bar to get to know them better, but instead they criticized her for not inviting them to her home instead and cooking for them. After a tense argument, Kobe eventually disinvited his friends to their wedding and left the bar early with Emily.
Emily told ET that although she got criticized for the choice of outing, it was actually Kobe who chose the venue.
"It was his idea, he's like, you should invite him out to have a drink," Emily shares. "I'm like, OK, great, and then it, like, completely backfired."
Kobe adds, "I just thought that I was going to a bar ... that they were going to discover how fun she is, how loving she is. But you know, it just backfired. I understand it was very common that you want to invite your husband's friends, bring them home, like, eat food and stuff like that. But I mean, we didn't have a home over there."
While Kobe didn't think his friends were being disrespectful -- rather, they were not used to different cultures -- Emily disagreed.
"Like, they could have been a little bit more kind about it instead of attacking me," she points out. "Because that's what it felt like in the moment."
Kobe shared that his particularly outspoken best friend, Valerie, has seen the criticism about him online.
"He's aware, he has a social media account and he's seen some of the comments but he said, 'This is not who I am....'," he says. "He's getting to understand the difference now, like, OK, [Emily and I] met over there and not like how we met in Cameroon. ... Traveling is cool on its own where you don't have a teacher, just by seeing things, you learn to understand that OK, OK, there's people living in a different style of what we live."
"I always have her back, she's my wife, you know?" he added of eventually sticking up for Emily at the bar.
Emily and Kobe note they're actually on good terms with Valerie and Kobe's other friends in Cameroon.
"My friends have played a very important role in my life and my wife has always done the same thing," Kobe says. "Nobody can ever take the place of the other. So, I just have to try as much as I can to make them, you know, let's go out, let's find a place and common ground to stay together."
As for criticism about Emily being "bossy," she didn't deny it.
"I'm the first to admit it, I know I'm bossy," she says. "I know I like it the way I like it, I know I'm type A. I'm a little bit of a brat probably, a little bit, but like I give in a lot too. Did we name our son, Atem, after his friend who hated me? Yeah, we did ... but also like, Kobe gets his way a lot too."
"I didn't become bossy after he married me, I have been who I have been the day he met me and, you know, I think on camera I'm a little bit more bossy than what I really am," she continues.
Kobe said Emily is "sweet" and has no issue going along with most of what she wants.
"We are good for each other because I can equally handle her in who she is," he notes.
Meanwhile, Emily was much more blunt.
"So, you know, everybody online can shut up because we love each other," she says.
90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? airs Sundays on TLC.
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