A pair of disgraced television hosts met for breakfast on Thursday.
Fired ‘Today’ anchor Billy Bush and Pat O’Brien, who was sacked from ‘The Insider’ in 2008, were spotted dining al fresco at a Los Angeles eatery.
The two men both lost their jobs after the release of offensive audio, with answering machine messages and an email causing the downfall of O’Brien and a hot wire mic recording of Bush during an interview with President Trump that became known as ‘p****gate’ leading to his dismissal by NBC.
Prior to those positions both men worked at ‘Access Hollywood,’ with Bush taking over for O’Brien in 2004 when he left the program.
The former co-workers appeared to be enjoying their more leisurely lifestyle as they chatted and later posed for a selfie with one another before heading off on their separate ways.
Buds: Billy Bush and Pat O’Brien grabbed breakfast together in Los Angeles on Thursday morning, snapping a selfie before they left
Pals: Bush and O’Brien worked together at ‘Access Hollywood,’ with Bush taking over as host after O’Brien left to anchor ‘The Insider’
O’Brien ran into trouble just one year into his gig as host of the ‘Entertainment Tonight’ spin-off ‘The Insider’ after voicemails he left a woman were released in which he suggested that the two ‘get some cocaine,’ ‘hire a ‘hooker’ and performa a number of different sex acts.
Shortly after he entered rehab, seeking treatment again three years later in 2008, but again returning to the show.
It was an email he wrote about his co-host Lara Spencer, who is now on ‘Good Morning America,’ that led to his downfall.
In a letter sent to colleagues at the time, O’Brien wrote that ‘watching Lara pick out accessories makes the viewers want to vomit. I’ll get killed for this, but I’m actually the one not afraid for my job. I want people to be happy.’
Bush broke his seven-month silence about the ‘p****gate’ incident in a sit-down with The Hollywood Reporter back in May.
In the tape, Bush can be heard calling actress Arianne Zucker, who was then on ‘Days of Our Lives,’ ‘hot as s***,’ and also saying nothing while Trump speaks about his co-host Nancy O’Dell in sexually graphic terms.
He said that he told his daughter during that phone call: ‘That was Dad in a bad moment a long time ago. You know me. I am really sorry that you had to hear and see that. I love you.’
Bush said that the teenager ‘needed to hear that’ and he needed to say it to her.
His youngest daughter, 14-year-old Lillie, decided never to watch the tape while his oldest, 18-year-old Josie, was instinctively protective of him.
‘My 18-year-old is more of a fighter. She was like, “All right, who do I need to take out?”
Bush also said that he reached out to O’Dell after the release of the tape, but offered few other details about that exchange.
‘I recently sent her a communication, yeah. I need to keep that between me and Nancy,’ said Bush, who would not say whether or not he had even received a response from his former co-host.
Out the door: Bush was fired by ‘Today’ last October after the release of the now infamous p****gate’ tape
Bush used his off time to work on himself as well, saying that he took time to read Eckhart Tolle’s ‘The Power of Now’ and even attended a Tony Robbins seminar in hopes of drawing inspiration from the self-help guru.
‘He walked to the end of the stage, and he pointed at me in the middle of his thing, and he said, “One moment in your life does not define who you are,” recalled Bush.
‘And the camera hit me, and these people started applauding — it was a little overwhelming but really empowering.’
He then added: ‘Later that night, we walked on fire together: 12 feet over 2,200-degree coals.’
Bush also spent a week cut off from the world to work on himself,with the ‘depressed, bloated and miserable’ host heading to Napa and enrolling in The Hoffman Process at the suggestion of his brother.
‘It’s not glamorous. It was seven days – no phones, no communication. And it’s so overpowering and so draining that you have to sign an agreement that you’ll take two days on your own by yourself before you go back to family or friends,’ explained Bush.
‘For 13 hours a day, it’s a study on your life and your negative patterns. At one point, you’re on your knees with a baseball bat and a pillow in front of you, and you are literally bashing these negative patterns that you’ve identified in your life.’
Bush said that by the end, he was able to start realizing some of his negative patterns, which is now working on as a result.
‘For me, one was judginess. I look back three years ago, doing “Access Hollywood,” and some story would come up, and I’d be like, “Oh, these people, these celebrities, how can they not ba-ba-ba-ba whatever,”‘ said Bush.
‘So that became the moment of real awakening, and it went on from there. I’ve done everything.’
Bush called the experience the ‘most powerful thing’ he did since his termination, and appeared to share two of the photos from his time at the retreat on Instagram.
One showed him using a pay phone to make a call, while in the other he was walking through a vineyard while looking to the sky and listening to some Neil Diamond on his headphones.
Bush captioned the photo with Diamond’s lyrics to ‘Hello Again,’ writing: ‘Hello my friend hello. It’s good to need you so. It’s good to love you like I do. To feel this way when I hear you say Hello.’
Bush joined NBC’s flagship morning show in August of last year after signing a deal that was said to be worth $3.5million a year, but was gone by October.