Scooter Braun on Justin Bieber's comeback: 'When you ask for redemption, people will give it to you'

Scooter Braun previously stressed just how bad Justin Bieber’s bad times were — “Every single day I tried to help him turn it around, and every single day I failed,” the manager told Billboard in November — but in a new interview with The New York Times, he talks about the upside: helping Bieber make a comeback.

“I looked at Robert Downey Jr. and all these people — when you ask for redemption, people will give it to you,” Braun said. “But if you’re the boy who cried wolf, they’ll destroy you. Once I saw there was consistency I said, O.K., now it’s time to go back in the professional life.”

Braun tells the Times that “the click” was about 20 months ago. “Six months after that, you start seeing me planning a roast,” he says, referring to March’s Comedy Central roast devoted to the singer. “And then the Calvin Klein ads come, and the roast comes.”

Since that roast, Bieber’s released Purpose, beat One Direction for the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200, set a Spotify record with “What Do You Mean?,” and became the youngest male artist to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, also with “What Do You Mean?”

“It was far worse than people realize,” Braun says of the time leading up to all this success. “And when he is ready, he will tell what he was going through. But it’s a hard thing to watch someone you care and genuinely love go through that. I’m really, really happy that’s over.”

Read the full story over at The New York Times.