Ann Curry spoke out about her disgraced former colleague Matt Lauer in appearances on The Late Show and Tuesday morning’s The View.
Curry, 61, told Stephen Colbert on Monday night that she hasn’t publicly celebrated the ousting of the man who reportedly led to her getting the boot at the Today Show in 2012 in part because of a non-disclosure agreement with NBC, but also, because she doesn’t want to hurt Lauer’s alleged sexual misconduct victims.
‘I do [have an NDA], but I can talk. I’m bold. I don’t want to cause pain, you guys,’ the television journalist told Colbert, 53, while discussing her upcoming PBS series We’ll Meet Again, airing Tuesday night.
‘The truth is that I was raised Catholic by a Buddhist,’ she said. ‘So think about the Catholic guilt, mixed with the karma, worries, the intensity of that. It was like, all of a sudden my brain — think ‘Game of Thrones’ — the wall, it went up. There was this whole wall of, ‘Uh-uh, you can’t talk like that. You can’t think like that.’ So I didn’t, actually, get to enjoy it.’
Ann Curry said she couldn’t publicly celebrate Matt Lauer’s firing because she had a non-disclosure agreement with NBC, and also because there are alleged victims behind his axing
Curry, pictured wiping away tears during her last taping of the Today Show with Matt Lauer in 2012. It was widely reported that Lauer was the reason for her getting ousted from the show
Curry (pictured with Stephen Colbert) said she was worried about karma if she even thought to relish her disgraced former colleague’s demise
During the interview Colbert lightened the mood with jokes from Twitter users from around the time of Lauer’s firing that began ‘Somewhere Ann Curry’ which got laughs from the journalist and his audience alike.
Colbert, however, suggested that it could be actually be karma in the end that saw Lauer get the ax from the Today Show in November after years of alleged sexual misconduct.
‘Well, that’s a good point,’ Curry said, but added she is even more cautious about any sort of ‘celebrating’ because the allegations that saw Lauer canned involved potential victims of his behavior.
‘You have to think about the pain. You know, a lot of people have suffered. So I haven’t had a chance to celebrate for a lot of reasons.’
‘I think that we’re not really done fixing the problem. We are a long way from fixing the problem,’ she said of sexual misconduct in the workplace.
‘It’s more than a conversation. It’s about action and it’s about not just telling people they can’t do certain things. It’s about changing the dynamic, the power balance within companies so that women are not seen as people who could never rise to the top. Once we figure that out, we might have a chance to figure this out.’
During her Tuesday morning appearance as a guest host on The View, Curry echoed her sentiments on workplace sexual misconduct from the previous night.
After a brief commercial break, host Joy Behar, 75, explained to the audience, ‘During the break, we were talking about the sexual allegations against Matt Lauer,’
Curry, pictured during her final gig on NBC’s the Today Show in 2012, spoke about her former employer during appearances promoting her new series with PBS airing Tuesday night
The day Matt Lauer was fired from the Today Show, Twitter users were quick to suggest Ann Curry must be somewhere celebrating, as shown by Colbert on Monday night
To which Curry jokingly asked, ‘Who?’
She then said that the Time’s Up movement’s attention needs to remain on the victims, not the abusers.
‘What we are now waking up to is that enough is enough! That we don’t need to put up with this…what we really need to focus on is the victims.’
The View’s Behar also asked about the now infamous button that was supposedly under Lauer’s desk to lock women in his office.
Curry said, ‘I don’t know’ and responded to a follow up if she had one, to which she said she did not.
The journalist also touched on some very new NBC drama regarding Megyn Kelly, who hosts Megyn Kelly Today. Kelly was off the air Tuesday morning- one day after she went after actress Jane Fonda in a headline-grabbing attack.
Tight-lipped: Curry tried to steer away from the inevitable questions about her former employment with NBC, which has been mired in controversy over the past months during her appearance on the View on Tuesday (pictured with host Joy Behar)
NBC chose to run a taped episode of Kelly’s hour of Today, despite the fact that she had managed to grab much public interest on Monday with her criticism of the Oscar-winning actress, who has repeatedly taken the host to task for asking about her plastic surgery in September.
The airing of Megyn Kelly om Tuesday also coincided with the announcement of the this year’s Oscar nominations, an event Today has covered in the past by speaking with the contenders during the 9am hour of the show.
The women on The View discussed the Fonda controversy on Tuesday, and guest host Ann Curry said that she was shocked by Kelly’s words.
‘We’re witnessing what we saw yesterday, a certain amount of meanness that I think is – meanness which we should not tolerate,’ said Curry.
Joy Behar was a bit more blunt, saying that Fonda’s response to Kelly’s comment should have been: ‘How much work have you had b****?’