Former NBC executive Jeff Zucker who claimed to have never heard ‘a whisper’ of Matt Lauer’s sexual misconduct joked about his in-office antics at an explicit comedy roast in 2008 which was described at the time as ‘three hours of d*** jokes’.
Zucker, who worked with Lauer on Today between 1992 and 2000, was among several guest speakers at the event.
While Zucker’s jokes were by no means the most graphic and none centered on harassment or assault, he won laughs from the room by discussing Lauer’s quirky sexual habits.
‘I don’t want to say Matt is a germophobe, but he’s the only guy I know who uses Purell both before and after he masturbates,’ was one remark.
In another crude inference, he told the room: ‘It’s good to see Matt up here and not under my desk.’
The jokes were part of the Friar’s Club Roast at the Hilton Midtown in New York City where Martha Stewart declared to applause: ‘I hear NBC executives call Matt the C**k of the Rock,’ a reference to the network’s Manhattan headquarters.
Former NBC executive Jeff Zucker is pictured (far right) laughing next to Meredith Vieria and Matt Lauer as Tom Cruise speaks at the 2008 roast at The Friar’s Club where others, including Zucker, joked about the Today show host’s sex life in explicit detail
The fact that the audience was comprised of 1,900 media and entertainment insiders makes current proclamations of shock at Lauer’s recent firing and alleged misconduct against junior staffers and assistants increasingly unsettling.
‘This was a comedic roast, but there was clearly a vein of truth running through all those jokes.
‘You had Katie Couric, Meredith Vieira and Jeff Zucker all standing up there joking about his sex in the office, his kinkiness.
‘They all knew,’ one media executive who was present told Fox News.
It is not known which other NBC executives attended. President Donald Trump, who relished Lauer’s firing last week and declared NBC and Comcast ‘fake news’, was also there.
Noah Oppenheim, president of NBC news, has insisted he was not aware of any complaints as has Andy Lack, NBC’s chairman who announced Lauer’s firing last week.
Current staffers say all were aware but formed a ‘boys’ club’ to protect Lauer and sweep complaints ‘under the carpet’.
NBC stars Meredith Vieira, Katie Couric, Martha Stewart and Bob Saget were among other speakers who took the jokes at the 2008 further. Vieria joked about both her and Couric having sex with Lauer.
‘Look at Katie Couric. She juggled Matt’s balls for six years. That’s three years per ball. She squeezed those suckers so tight, she left nothing for me. Thanks, Katie,’ she said.
Vieria, who once found a bag of sex toys in Lauer’s office, also roped Al Roker into the sex joys.
‘People say he’s so prim and proper, like he’s got a stick up his a**. It’s not a stick, my friends, it’s Al Roker’s d***.”
Zucker took the podium to joke that Lauer, who he worked with for five years on Today, ‘masturbated with hand sanitizer’. He ‘rolled’ with laughter along with other audience members as Vieria described colleague Katie Couric ‘squeezing’ Lauer’s genitals
Couric made an extraordinarily rude joke about Lauer, her co-host for several years, performing oral sex on Ann Curry.
‘He loves to eat curry,’ she said, prompting gasps from the room before adding: ‘What? Indian food! What’s wrong with you people?’
You had Katie Couric, Meredith Vieira and Jeff Zucker all standing up there joking about his sex in the office, his kinkiness. They all knew.
Media executive who attended the roast
Curry, who was unceremoniously tossed out by the network in 2012 amid rumors of rising tension with Lauer, ‘blanched’.
She was targeted again later in a joke from the host himself who said: ‘What’s with all the small-d*** jokes? It was fun to look over and see Ann Curry laughing… like she doesn’t know how big my d*** really is.’
At the time, Lauer had been married to his wife Annette Roque for 10 years. She was pictured on Thursday without her wedding ring and is said to be considering divorce.
Saget made one of two references to her throughout the speech.
He jokingly claimed to have told Lauer: ‘Do what I’m doing, Matt. Come into the Dark Side. My next wife hasn’t even been born yet.’
Other jokes included crude references to Ann Curry’s genitals and Al Roker and Lauer engaging in gay sex. There is no video of it. Instead, one reporter brought in a notepad to scribble down the ‘dirtiest’ jokes under the table
Donald Trump was sat next to Katie Couric at the event. Couric’s jokes were among the most explicit
Couric also acknowledged Roque, saying: ‘According to his wife, he’s not really an early riser, if you know what I mean.;
Guests included MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough who said this week that he was so uncomfortable by the tone of the event that he left early.
In his description of it, Scarborough said jokes were about Lauer ‘pushing himself on people’.
The event banned cameras or filming except for a few photographs outside and some of guest speaker Tom Cruise’s more family-friendly jokes about his 2005 interview with Lauer on Katie Holmes and Scientology.
Others, but none which matched Scarborough’s description of Lauer ‘pushing himself on people’, were described in a newly-resurfaced contemporaneous report by a reporter from the Village Voice.
The writer had snuck a notepad in and took notes under the table.
Neither Vieria nor Couric has commented since Lauer’s firing from the network last Wednesday amid claims of sexual harassment and assault.
Roker said on-air in the hours after the announcement that he was shocked by it. He was the 2008 roastmaster.
Unlike the other guests, Zucker, however, went on the record last week to say he had never been aware of the apparent misconduct that Lauer’s accusers now describe.
Zucker last week claimed during an interview with Business Insider (above) that he had ‘never heard a whisper’ of Lauer being ‘deviant or predatory’ but shied away from acknowledging rumors of Lauer’s well-known sexual impropriety
Speaking at the Business Insider IGNITION event, where Lauer’s NBC colleague Megyn Kelly earlier said she had heard ‘rumours’ about his behavior, Zucker said: ‘Obviously it’s incredibly, incredibly disturbing…I’ve known Matt for 25 years and I didn’t know this Matt.’
Zucker was poignantly careful to specify that he had no knowledge or concern or any non-consensual interaction.
Asked if he ‘saw this coming’, he responded: ‘What’s chronicled is deviant and predatory behavior.
‘And you know, obviously, that is not something that I was ever aware of or had even heard of or had ever been suggested or anything like that.’
He went on: ‘For five years in my career, you know, no one ever brought to me or to my knowledge, there was never a complaint about Matt, there was never a suggestion of that kind of deviant, predatory behavior, not even a whisper of it.
There was never a suggestion of that kind of deviant, predatory behavior, not even a whisper of it. Nothing like that
Jeff Zucker on November 30 about Lauer’s alleged sexual misconduct
‘Nothing like that. So you know I can’t say that that’s the culture that we lived in.’
A representative for CNN, where Zucker is now the CEO, did not respond to questions about his 2008 participation in jokes about Lauer’s sex life.
Hours after he made the comments last week, a Page Six alleged that he did receive complaints about Lauer but ‘brushed them under the carpet’.
Current Today staffers told the newspaper that Zucker was ‘part of a boys club’ which was well-aware of Lauer’s antics.
‘Everybody at NBC knew about Matt Lauer’s sexually inappropriate behavior — and knew not to talk about it.
‘Women did complain about his behavior, and there were a lot of closed-door meetings before it was all brushed under the carpet,’ the staffer said.
The roast predates the alleged 2014 incident at the Sochi Winter Olympics which sparked the scandal now engulfing Lauer. It was then that an unnamed NBC employee claims Lauer sexually assaulted her.
Zucker worked with Lauer directly on Today for five years on before he was promoted. He is pictured with the host and his colleague Al Roker in 2009
Lauer and his wife Annette Roque were pictured separately in Sag Harbor, New York on Wednesday without their wedding rings
Her report of the incident to NBC executives last week triggered his firing.
Since then, The New York Times and Variety have both published investigations which chronicle other alleged incidents of impropriety.
Among their claims is that Lauer gave them sex toys with instructions on how he wanted to use them. Others say he had a button under his desk which allowed him to lock the door from his seat.
Earlier this week, Scarborough said the event was proof that network chiefs knew about the sexual impropriety but did nothing.
‘The whole theme was he does the show and then he has sex with people, with employees.
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said this week he was so uncomfortable at the event that he left
‘There were a thousand people in the audience like the most powerful people in media and everybody that came up was making fun of Matt Lauer, about pushing himself on people.’
He slapped down claims that none of the network’s top executives knew about Lauer’s impropriety.
‘Was this whispered behind closed doors? No, it was shouted from the mountaintops and everybody laughed about it, which tells you what culture used to be.’
Zucker left Comcast in 2010 amid falling ratings. He joined CNN in 2013.
He and Lauer worked on Today together between 1994 and 2000, when he was promoted to NBC’s President of Entertainment.