The former TODAY anchor returned to her old stomping grounds for a sitdown with Savannah Guthrie, where she defended her memoir, Going There, and spoke at length about her relationship with former colleague Matt Lauer, who was fired for sexual misconduct, as well as other controversial subjects that her pen touched upon in the tome. “I couldn’t imagine writing something that wasn’t honest and radically transparent. I didn’t want to do a victory lap or my greatest hits,” she told Guthrie in a sitdown that aired Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2021. “I’ve had an extraordinary life, incredible opportunities, I’ve had huge successes, I’ve had some pretty public failures, too. One of the reasons is—and you can relate to this, I think, Savannah — people have always said, ‘I feel like I know you.’ But as I say in my prologue, the box puts you in a box, the flat screen flattens. I wanted to share the messy parts, what real life was like.” In leaked excerpts of Going There, Couric revealed that she’d heard whispers about Lauer’s alleged sexual misconduct but assumed his relationships were consensual. She noted that after he was initially fired in November 2017 after former producer Brooke Nevils accused him of rape (and numerous other women accused him of various acts of sexual impropriety), she reached out to Lauer, calling him a “decent” man she “felt heartless to abandon.” She explained her stance on TODAY, telling Guthrie, “The side of Matt I knew was the side of Matt I think you all knew. He was kind, generous, considerate, a good colleague. As I got more information and learned more about what was going on behind the scenes. And then I did some of my own reporting, talked to people, tried to excavate what had been going on. It was really devastating and also disgusting.” She added, “I think what I realized is that there was a side of Matt I never really knew. I tried to understand why he behaved the way he did, and why he was so reckless, and callous, and honestly abusive to other women.” Couric explained that the whispers at the time were par for the course, and that there was much less awareness and understanding of the realities of sexual harassment and misconduct in the pre-#MeToo era. “There’s always gossip in television news, and I think there was gossip here and there about certain people, and you know—I think it was a very permissive environment in the ’90s and I think permissive environments often result in serious transgressions,” she said. “I think back then it was sort of like … you felt like it was none of your business, and nobody came to me to talk about it. I think our notion of what’s a consensual relationship has changed dramatically, and you have to consider the power dynamics.” When asked about the texts she exchanged with Lauer after he was fired, Couric said that she and Lauer have “no relationship” now. “I think I used those text messages because I thought they were very illustrative of how our relationship devolved and ultimately deteriorated,” she explained. “I thought that was a powerful way to really let the reader into my thought process, and how as I got more and more information, it was harder and harder for me to reconcile these two sides.” Couric also discussed her editing out late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s scathing remarks about Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling in protest of police brutality against people of color. Couric revealed in Going There that she did it to protect Ginsburg, who she thought may not have totally understood what Kaepernick was doing and why. “I think what people don’t realize is, we make editorial decisions like that all the time, and I chose to talk about this and put it in the book for a discussion,” Couric explained of her Yahoo! News interview with Ginsburg. “I mentioned that it was a conundrum that I asked Justice Ginsburg about Colin Kaepernick and taking a knee and how she felt about that,” Couric told Guthrie. “And I did include the fact that she said it was dumb and disrespectful, it was stupid and arrogant and quite a bit of what she said. There was another line that I thought was — I wasn’t sure what she meant exactly, and I thought it was subject to interpretation.” That said, she has some regrets about how she handled the interview as a whole at the time. “What I wish I had done is asked a follow-up to clarify, or just run it and let her clarify it later,” Couric admitted. “But I think the most pertinent and direct response to the question about Colin Kaepernick I included, and that’s why I raised it because maybe I should have done the other sentence, as well.” In terms of her work life, Couric also discussed her brief stint as an anchor for CBS Evening News, saying she didn’t think that the world as a whole, nor the network, was necessarily ready for a female evening news anchor. However, in excerpts of Going There, it’s revealed that she wasn’t supportive of other anchors, including Ashleigh Banfield, who Couric wrote was rumored to be replacing her on TODAY, and wrote that Diane Sawyer"must be stopped." However, ultimately, Couric’s goal with Going There was to tell the sometimes ugly truth as she sees it from her own lens and hopes that people reading the book in its entire context will understand that she means no harm to anyone else. “I think so much of it has been taken out of context,” she said of her perceived cattiness against fellow female news reporters and anchors. “There’s some cheeky observations and I had fun mentioning [certain] things, but when they’re plucked out and woven together to try to sort of misrepresent the narrative … I think anyone who reads the book knows the spirit of the book. It’s fun. I’m honest about some things — I wanted to be honest. It’s not My Little Pony and sunshine and lollipops. It’s a true account of my journey from my perspective.” Next, get Katie Couric’s six biggest pandemic self-care secrets.
