Katie Couric and Matt Lauer spent nine years together as co-anchors on TODAY, but Lauer’s firing in 2017 for inappropriate sexual conduct meant the end of their relationship.
“We have no relationship,” Couric told Savannah Guthrie about Lauer on TODAY Tuesday in a wide-ranging interview about her new memoir, “Going There.”
Couric said she did her own reporting after hearing of the allegations of sexual harassment and abuses of power against Lauer and discovered “there was a side of Matt I never really knew.”
“As I got more information and learned what was going on behind the scenes, it was really upsetting and disturbing,” she said. “It was really devastating, but also disgusting.
“I think what I realized is that there was a side of Matt I never really knew, and I tried to understand why he behaved the way he he did, and why he was so reckless and callous, and honestly abusive to other women.”
Former TODAY anchor Katie Couric talks about her new memoir ‘Going There’
She covers everything from her family being “blighted with racists” and suffering from an eating disorder as a teen and young adult to some fraught interactions with high-level executives during her time on television.
Couric also describes specifically leaving out a statement by the late Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in an interview when Couric was at Yahoo to protect Ginsburg’s reputation.
Ginsburg said in the interview that former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who became a lightning rod when he knelt during the national anthem in protest of police brutality and systemic racism, had “contempt for a government that has made it possible for their parents and grandparents to live a decent life.”
Couric left that line out of the interview to protect Ginsburg, which she writes was a mistake because she let her personal feelings as a fan of Ginsburg get in the way of her job.
