'It's been a very painful time for a lot of people who worked with Matt, knew him, and care about him,' the 61-year-old said of his former 'Today' co-host.
- May 2, 2018
AceShowbiz - Katie Couric is opening about sexual misconduct allegation leveled against his former "Today" co-host Matt Lauer, who was eventually fired from the NBC show. Couric got candid about the scandal while stopping by "The Wendy Williams Show" on Tuesday, May 1.
"Well, you know, it's been a very painful time for a lot of people who worked with Matt, knew him, and care about him, who never witnessed this behavior that is now obviously being talked about," Couric said. "I don't know the full extent of all these things that happened. I can only talk about my personal experience and I was always treated respectfully and appropriately."
When Williams asked if Lauer would ever return to TV, the 61-year-old anchor said, "That's not really for me to say, Wendy ... I don't know." She continued saying, "I think that depends on the path he chooses, and how he decides to handle what has happened and the full extent of what has happened is eventually revealed."
Couric's statements arrive after Ann Curry, the former "Today" show co-host, recently revealed in an interview that she attempted to let the network's honchos be aware of Matt's sexual misconduct in 2012. Ann claimed that a female staffer came to her in tears before revealing that she was "sexually harassed physically" by Matt. "A woman approached me and asked me tearfully if I could help her," Ann recalled. "She was afraid of losing her job... I believed her."
Later, Ann brought the issue to the management without revealing the woman's name per the latter's request. "I told management they had a problem and they needed to keep an eye on him and how he deals with women," she said.
NBC, however, declined the claims. A network spokesman said that there was no record of the warning in Matt's file. With that being said, it remains unknown if the network took any action to follow up Ann's report at that time.
