THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30TH. I sat down to breakfast on the terrace of the Montage Beverly Hills. It was a typically cloudless, blue-sky day in LA, completely at odds with the storm raging back east. A copy of the New York Times lay alongside my poached egg and coffee. And there it was, staring back at me: “Longtime Face of NBC’s ‘Today’ Is Fired as Complaints Multiply.”
One particularly appalling paragraph jumped out: Matt had called a producer into his office on the pretense of discussing a story, pushed a button under his desk that closed the door, pulled down the producer’s pants, bent her over a chair, and had sex with her. Then she passed out. Matt instructed his assistant to take her to the NBC nurse.
This took place in 2001. My office was next to his. Our assistants shared a reception area. How had this happened right under my nose?
Matt put out a statement expressing “sorrow and regret” for the pain he’d caused. He added that, while some of what was said “wasn’t true or has been mischaracterized, there’s enough truth in these stories to make me feel embarrassed and ashamed.”
As I walked down Wilshire Boulevard to a meeting with my agents at WME, I tried to process what I’d read. And suddenly a paparazzo appeared out of nowhere, clicking away. I was feeling out of sorts but mustered a weak smile, having been played so many times by the tabloids when they captured anything less than a happy face （“Woe Is Katie”; “Katie’s Heartbreak”）。 So of course the headline accompanying the Page Six item this time was “Katie Couric Can’t Stop Smiling After Matt Lauer Gets Fired.”
Andy Lack reached out to me, which I appreciated. We arranged to meet at my place a few days later, when I’d be back in New York. The whole thing felt urgent for both of us.
He walked in looking more rumpled than usual. We took a seat in the den.
“I was shocked,” Andy said. “I had no idea it was going on. I never saw this coming.” Yes, they were friends, but apparently Matt didn’t share the details of his life with Andy, despite the amount of time they spent together on the day-to-day. Despite Matt calling him his “best friend.”
“Andy,” I said, “can you explain what Matt did? Was this sexual assault? Because that’s really important for me to know.”
He answered immediately: “No.”
“Then what is it? Were there pictures?”
Andy clearly felt uncomfortable giving me details. “It’s really an age thing,” he said. “The age difference is really troubling.” Although I wonder if what Andy meant was power. As in, the power imbalance was really troubling.
He told me he had gone to Matt’s apartment the night before to fire him. Matt did not protest. “He knew I had no choice,” Andy said. “It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.”
And I’ll never forget what he said next: “Matt’s gone from hero to zero, literally overnight.”
We sat there in stunned silence, marinating in the shock and sadness of it all. Then Andy grabbed his coat, hugged me at the elevator, and hit the button. I later heard that the day before Matt was fired, the men in charge of the show walked out of a conference room, grim-faced and stoop-shouldered. As the director passed a producer’s desk, he said under his breath, “The TODAY show will never be the same.”
EVEN THOUGH I had read about all the awful things Matt had done, I was worried about him. I imagined him sleepless, haggard, depressed…maybe worse. And how were Annette and their children holding up? So I reached out again and asked how he was doing, which I realized was a very dumb question.
Matt got back to me two and a half hours later. He gave me his new number “for my files.” He said he was struggling and would like to hear my voice.
Before I could respond, I heard from him again—at 4:04 a.m. He said he had tried to leave me a voice mail but （true to form） my mailbox was full. He repeated that he was struggling and that he’d like to hear my voice. I told him I would call him later that morning.
John thought I should just jump in the car and drive out to East Hampton to talk to him. I wanted to, but I didn’t know what I would say. If I’m being perfectly honest, I was worried about my reputation. Matt’s situation had created a feeding frenzy the likes of which I’d never seen before—there were paparazzi camped out at his house. If I was spotted there, it might have looked like I condoned the behavior. （I guess I could have visited in the dead of night, like Jennifer Aniston’s character on The Morning Show after her colleague, played by Steve Carell, had an eerily similar crash and burn.）