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Katie Couric really went there, to paraphrase the title of her new blockbuster memoir. But she has burned so many bridges that it is not known if America’s old sweetheart will ever return.
“No one can understand why Katie did this,” a senior press producer who worked with Couric told The Post. “She’s ruining her legacy.”
Although “Going There” didn’t come out until October 26, this week The Post reported some of the shocking quotes – including on longtime Couric rival Diane Sawyer (“Loved that I was putting on in Diane’s shoes “), Martha Stewart (for whom prison was a” healthy humility “) and her ex, former television producer and current president of the Red Sox, Tom Werner (a” manual narcissist “).
She cruelly criticizes her fellow “Today” host Deborah Norville for having a “relentless perfectionism” that has put off morning viewers.
Norville told The Post: “I am just too stunned and frankly hurt to comment.”
As for Prince Harry and Couric’s accusation that, during a polo match around 2012, “a strong aroma of alcohol and cigarettes seemed to ooze from [his] every pore ”- a friend of Harry’s Queen Elizabeth parrots words after her grandson’s own sensational comments to Oprah Winfrey:“ Memories may vary. “
Couric admits she gave young journalist Ashleigh Banfield a cold shoulder from the start because helping her would have been “self-sabotage” and “I had heard her father was telling anyone who would listen to him. that she was going to replace me “.
Banfield responded this week by saying that in fact her “senile” father was in a nursing home at the time and simply told a Post reporter that he hoped his daughter, then an Afghanistan correspondent for NBC , would be “given a desk job like Katie’s.”
Banfield told The Post: “Her words really touched me. She was my North Star. I always considered her one of the bravest presenters… in a time when we were all called bimbos. was the best morning show host ever, I’m just stunned.
Now she wonders if Couric has undermined her career.
“NBC left me heartbroken. I was at the top of my game in 2002. But as quickly as I got up I went off the rails and got no explanation. They took my desk, my desk, my phone, my computer… They never told me why. It was the most painful mystery. When I heard about Katie’s comments, I wondered if that was the reason.
According to a television industry insider, Banfield’s snub “was certainly not an isolated incident. [Couric] definitely contributed to toxicity [at NBC]. Katie was part of a culture that did not support women, and she contributed to it.
All of this does not go well with others in the TV news industry.
“From the clips I’ve seen, she takes wives from Martha Stewart to Diane Sawyer and Deborah Norville. She’s… so tough on other women because she’s as ambitious as she was, it’s unforgivable, ”said the lead producer. “She gives new meaning to the old saying: ‘There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.'”
If Couric expected the book to be greeted with rah-rah enthusiasm, she has now had a rude awakening.
A former Couric TV colleague told The Post: “I think she really wants to settle her scores, but she didn’t realize how bad it would be and how bad she would fall.”
Meanwhile, Couric was apparently not a peach at work herself.
“She made no secret of the fact that everything revolved around her against a whole team. And of course, other anchors feel the same, but they hide it better. She didn’t always have a great filter for what she was really thinking, “a CBS source told The Post of Couric while hosting” CBS Evening News “from 2006 to 2011.” She devastated a corresponding in front of staff members telling her that her makeup made her look like Raggedy Ann.
A TV industry insider echoed, “Katie is a lot of fun – funny, charismatic, cool… But she can also be a pretty scary person. When you think of a bad girl, it’s her. It was by no means a girl of a girl. It seems she reveals this side of herself in the book, whether she likes it or not.
In “Going There” Couric sometimes describes himself as doing the right thing as opposed to the bad behavior of others.
She recounts her time as a global Yahoo News anchor from 2014 to 2017, and how she came up with the idea of creating a “powerful partnership” with Starbucks CEO Howard Schulz. She put him in touch with then Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who Couric said neglected to follow up.
“I found out later that it was Marissa’s MO. Don’t return emails… show up at dinners with clients when they were already at dessert, leaving powerful people waiting hours in front of their desks, ”Couric writes.
But when Mayer went out of her way – “went to great lengths to arrange a phone call, factoring in the nine hour time difference, then letting me know his meeting was a few minutes” – to invite Couric at the Met Gala. , the anchor was not impressed: “Yeesh,” she wrote.
At NBC, where Couric hosted “Today” alongside Lauer for 15 years, a producer recalled that all of this is “normal with her.” Indeed, there was a “sense of relief” when Couric left in 2006, as she was “self-centered and aggressive towards the end”.
The NBC producer pitted Couric against another former “Today” co-host.
“You would never see Meredith (Vieira) do something like that,” the producer said. “[Couric] just wants to be relevant. She has no platform, so this [book] is a cry of relevance.
Couric reveals surprises about her personal life, including how, on her first date with husband John Molner, whom she married in 2014, someone texted Molner’s girlfriend to tell her that ‘he was dating Couric.
There’s also the story of how, while dating Brooks Perlin, 17 her junior, from 2006 to 2011, Couric once got so drunk at a nightclub near Grand Central Station that, writes she said, “I collapsed like a sack of potatoes… Brooks took me to Lenox Hill Hospital, where he told the staff I needed help… and privacy.” I remember a stretcher, an IV, violent vomiting… ”
But friends are shocked to hear how Couric wrote about her late husband Jay Monahan who tragically died of colon cancer in 1998 at just 42 years old.
In a chapter of the book, she details how Monahan – the father of her daughters Carrie, now 25, and Ellie, 30 – was a Civil War enthusiast who collected Confederate artifacts and participated in reenactments until Just four months before her death, While writing, she treated her “passion for Confederation with amused tolerance, seeing it as a benign hobby” and threw him an Old South-themed 40th birthday party.
But looking back, she’s embarrassed that an “exasperated” Monahan gave a nine-page speech to the United Daughters of the Confederacy after the group was denied a patent renewal for its Confederate Flag logo. He “slandered” Senator Carol Moseley Braun’s comments against the logo as “poisonous” and called the press that covered him “obsessed with the politically correct appearance.”
“I can’t believe Katie is so remarkably candid to the point of being squeaky about her late husband Jay,” said a friend who knew them both. Meanwhile, some of his entourage aren’t the biggest fans of Couric’s second husband. “People who have read the book are really wondering how she could be so overly respectful of her sycophantic husband John Molner,” the friend said.
A friend of the Hamptons added, “I’m disappointed, but not surprised with this book. Molner has always misunderstood what matters most to Katie, who is building a business that also gets her back on TV. I will say that he enjoys the glory of being Mr. Katie Couric and that he has managed to alienate so many people with whom she has dealt.
Couric has been working on the book for two years and those who know her have revealed that she called for people from her past to remember memories and moments from her career.
A former colleague said: “A lot of people said they couldn’t believe that no one in his orbit told him this book was a bad idea because it’s his legacy.”
Now that she sees the horrified reactions, Couric scrambles to undo some of the damage done.
“She called friends to tell them she’s a good person and tell them her publisher told her to add all the gossip in order to sell more books,” the former TV colleague said. “But she has more money than any of us could ever need. It’s not about selling books.
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