We met at a café on Lexington Avenue and I passed the pathology report across the table.
This time, Mark smiled.
83
“And YOU Get a Vacuum!”
KATIE RECEIVED A less favorable prognosis.
After a taping one day in November, Abra came to my dressing room. “Katie, they’re not renewing the show,” she said. It was just too expensive to produce at a time when audiences were getting smaller by the day.
I was okay with it. I had been pretty ambivalent about the whole thing from the beginning, which probably isn’t a great way for the host and namesake of a show to feel. It just wasn’t my calling. John told me I should have just embraced the genre and had fun with it, but with George Watson’s words—Don’t be typecast as the cute girl who does features—ringing in my ears, that was easier said than done.
No, the mortician-like prompter reading that was expected of me at the CBS Evening News wasn’t right either, but the softness of daytime was a wild overcorrection （an episode devoted to “Redbook’s Hottest Husbands” may have been the nadir）。 We never really figured out the balance.
Finding somewhere you can put your multidimensional self on display is tough. I don’t think I fully realized at the time just how unique the TODAY show was—the only place I could comfortably converse with the Senate majority leader and the Teletubbies on the same morning.
The day we taped our Christmas show, I summoned the staff to the set to deliver some unjolly news—that there wouldn’t be a third season. No one seemed especially surprised. Deflated, maybe, but not shocked. It had only been two years, not 10. And yet we had developed the kind of camaraderie that comes with working deep into the night and on weekends together, changing things at the last minute and somehow putting on a show every day.
Once again, I’d already found a safety net: The previous April, I was a featured guest at Yahoo’s lavish retreat in the Turks and Caicos, an orgy of fruity cocktails, twinkly lights, over-the-top dinners, and high-end swag. The idea was to position the company as a thought leader in the world of new media for an audience of CMOs. John Legend performed （Yahoo flew in a special piano）。
At some point I got the chance to meet with Marissa Mayer one on one and pitch her an idea. I told her Yahoo had huge pipes, but the stuff going through them was sludge—decidedly lowbrow and unsubstantial. With people increasingly turning to their laptops and mobile devices for news and information, it seemed like such a missed opportunity.
“Do you want to keep serving up stories like ‘Meet the Boy Who Lived on Ramen Noodles for 13 Years’ or do you want to create meaningful content?” I said, oiling my escape hatch. “Yahoo has the potential to be a really important destination. I’d like to help you do that.”
Marissa’s eyes widened. I could tell I had her on the line.
JUNE 12TH, 2014—our last taping. At the top of the show, Morgan Freeman’s reassuring visage appeared on-screen. “Today on Katie, we look back together,” he intoned. “It’s been quite a journey, hasn’t it?”
Yes, Morgan, it has.
For our final show, the staff had arranged a number of surprise guests; the theme, apparently, was alcohol—I did a tequila shot on-air with Susan Sarandon and had a glass of red wine with Martina McBride. Josh Groban came by, and so did Valerie Harper. It felt a little like attending my own wake.
I guess it’s fitting that we ended the show with a giveaway; we called it Katie’s Ultimate Swag Bag. Mucho free stuff for the studio audience: a camera （“You’re going home with one!”）， a handbag, scarves, a travel hair dryer and flat iron, Bliss products （“Bliss wants everyone to have luxuriously smooth skin, so they’re giving you their hot salts scrub!”）， a Vitamix blender, headphones, a gym membership, a cordless vacuum that I hoisted over my head and shoulder-pressed, demonstrating how light it was.
Before signing off, I had the staff and crew come onstage. Each held a flute of champagne; I teared up as I thanked them for their hard work. “It’s been a bear, but you made it bearable,” I said. I wasn’t doing the happy dance I did when I was finally sprung from CBS, but there was none of the momentousness of when I left TODAY. A long line of people had tried and failed at this—Bonnie Hunt, Megan Mullally, Queen Latifah, Anderson Cooper, Bethenny Frankel, Kris Jenner, Carnie Wilson, Magic Johnson, Martin Short, Caroline Rhea, Tempestt Bledsoe, Harry Connick Jr., Chrissy Teigen, Tony Danza, Jane Pauley…and now they could add my name to the list.