Harvey and I crossed paths a fair amount. Of course, he pushed relentlessly for coverage of his movies on TODAY. I saw him at Super Bowl XLVIII in Woody Johnson’s box at MetLife Stadium, where the mix of people had a bar–scene–in–Star Wars feel—Quentin Tarantino, Dick Cheney, Lorne Michaels…My main memory, beyond the shrimp cocktail tower and sushi platters, was how inattentive Weinstein was to his gorgeous wife, Georgina Chapman. Harvey was such an operator, nothing diverted him from working a roomful of players.
After Weinstein came the parade of pervs, everyone from Mario Batali to Louis C.K., nailed for jerking off in front of up-and-coming female comics looking to be mentored. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised; two years earlier, he’d reached out to see if I’d appear on his FX show Louie. In the scene he pitched, I’m on TV, reading the news, while Louie watches. And suddenly I break from the broadcast to speak to him directly: “Louie, just do it. You know you’re gonna do it. So just take off your pants and get started…I’m gonna go back to my story. Just watch my mouth and do your disgusting thing.” Louie unbuttons his pants.
And…scene. I guess life does imitate art. Even though John was a big Louie fan, I passed.
With women coming forward like never before to tell their painful, often ruinous truths, you couldn’t help but think about Anita Hill. I’ll never forget how alone she seemed, back in 1991, as she testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee—this poised, serious-minded, Black law professor being stared down by a tribunal of white male legislators, some as old as 88. Howell Heflin drawling, “Are you a scorned woman?” Joe Biden and Arlen Specter prodding Hill for the most embarrassing thing Clarence Thomas had ever said to her. Orrin Hatch waving around a copy of The Exorcist as supposed proof that Hill’s reality was actually a fever dream, cribbed from the pages of a lurid bestseller.
I’d interviewed Hill shortly before the hearings and asked a number of questions that in retrospect are pretty tone-deaf, such as: If Thomas had repeatedly disrespected her at the Department of Education, why did she take a job with him at the EEOC? Her answer: She liked the work. It was an opportunity to put her skills toward civil rights initiatives, she said, which is what she’d always wanted to do. And in those days, it’s not as though women—even talented, well-educated ones—were juggling tons of options. Particularly women of color.
As for leaving the position, Hill noted it would have been hard to find another one, especially since she wouldn’t be able to count on a reference from her current boss, Thomas.
“So,” Hill said, “it would mean I had no job.”
What women have had to put up with because they needed the job.
The morning of Thomas’s testimony, we were wrapping up the first hour of TODAY with some cross talk. I was in the Rotunda at the Capitol, and Bryant and Faith Daniels were in New York, maxing on the sofa on a Friday morning; “a getaway morning,” as Bryant always called them. Wearing a charcoal-gray blazer with the peaks of a starched white hankie poking out of the breast pocket, he wondered how long people were going to remain interested in the judicial drama. He and Faith ticked off a few high-profile confirmation scandals, noting how, in each case, the media circus eventually moved on. Tossing back to me, Bryant said, “When do you think the public hits burnout on this one?”
I smiled into the camera. “I think it’s going to be a good, long while before they will.”
Part VI
89
The Last Supper
IN THE FALL of 2017, a couple of reporters reached out: Can I talk to you about Matt Lauer?
I took their calls and told them the truth—that it had been widely assumed Matt had a lot of problems in his marriage. Infidelity and talk of divorce had been tabloid fodder for years.
I knew Matt loved beautiful women; I knew he was an unabashed flirt. He could charm the pants （as it were） off any celebrity—I’d heard that Julia Roberts always requested that he be the one to interview her. And any time he was chatting up Sandra Bullock about her latest movie, I wanted to shout across the studio, Get a room! He told me a hilarious story about the time he’d just taken his first big glass of colonoscopy prep and was gearing up for a long night near the john when Elle Macpherson called and invited him out for a drink. Matt tried to make himself throw up but couldn’t, cursing his lousy timing.
I knew he was a “player,” but I didn’t know his extracurriculars were happening inside 30 Rock. I had put the “spread some butter on your thighs” incident out of my mind, convinced it was a creepy one-off.