Peng Shuai: NBC Says It Has Not Asked For An Interview With Sequestered Chinese Tennis Star

deadline.com:

An NBC Olympics executive said Thursday that the network has not made a request to interview Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai after the tennis star at the center of speculation over her well-being attended the Beijing Winter Games.Peng has been at the center of a swirl of controversy since she accused former Chinese Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli of rape last year in a now-deleted social media post.

Fans across the world expressed concern when Peng disappeared for nearly a month.She reappeared recently, however, for a series of seemingly choreographed appearances at the Beijing Olympics.

The latest was Tuesday, as she sat with IOC President Thomas Bach watching American-born skier Eileen Gu, who is competing for China, as she came out on top at the Women’s Freeski Big Air final, and gave an interview to a French outlet with a Beijing Olympics official monitoring the conversation.NBC Olympics president and executive producer Molly Solomon today called political context provided by NBC Sports during the pageantry and propaganda of the Opening Ceremony “incredibly important” but said that NBC, arguably the foreign media outlet with the most leverage in China at the moment, didn’t feel the time was right for an interview with Peng especially given the Chinese State supervision….“I don’t know that now is the right time for that,” Solomon told reporters today. “We have not made that request because she’s gone back into the bubble,” — Peng is now isolating for 14 days.

Solomon said the right time for such a request would be “later,” but noted, “we followed her as she toured all the events this weekend with the IOC president.”The tennis star gave an interview this week to L’Équipe with Chinese Olympic Committee Chief of Staff Wang Kan