The Final Days Of Matt Lauer at NBC
/
At the Thanksgiving Day Parade, Matt Lauer knew what was coming.
The Today Show Anchor told colleagues at the time, “This is going to be my last parade.”
Lauer knew that the noose was tightening around his neck.
Page Six writes that while Lauer was resigned to his fate the day of the parade, insiders tell The Post that he fought to the bitter end. He lied about previous liaisons, repeatedly telling top bosses he had nothing to confess or feel ashamed about.
Then Lauer admitted only that he’d had three “consensual” affairs during his 25 years at “Today.”
Even now, he struggles to accept that his fall was so swift.
“He goes between sadness and acceptance of his fate, to disbelief how it all happened so quickly and how the situation was so out of his control,” says a source close to him.
It was in mid-November, around six weeks after the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke, that years of speculation about Lauer’s “indiscretions” were being seriously examined.
According to the NBC source who eavesdropped on Lauer’s ominous Thanksgiving parade prediction, “He was already being investigated by Variety magazine, but at that point, nobody knew what they had got on him.
“The Times was calling around, saying they were doing a piece on the culture of the ‘Today’ show, and The Enquirer was asking about settlements paid to female staff members who had affairs with Matt.”
During that period, NBC President Noah Oppenheimer and Chairman Andy Lack, Lauer’s close friend, and others approached him “several times,” asking, “Is there anything we should know or be worried about?”
Lauer responded each time, “I am racking my brains, but I can’t think of anything."
In late November, Lauer’s first accuser, still employed at NBC, came forward.
The source says the woman provided “irrefutable evidence” — speculated to be a naked photograph of Lauer. And the accuser also claimed “that she wasn’t the only woman he’d done this to.”
The complaint triggered a rapid chain of events, not least because the accuser was represented by renowned civil-rights and employment lawyer Ari Wilkenfeld. “She had a high-powered attorney from Washington, DC, and so everyone knew if NBC didn’t take swift action, they would have arranged for a sit-down interview with a competitor,” a second source tells The Post.
If Lauer had an inkling of the thunderbolt that was about to strike, he didn’t show it during his Tuesday, Nov. 28, appearance on “Today” — the morning of his firing.
“He was acting his usual cocky, confident self,” says the first insider. “He had no idea that this would turn out to be his last day on the show.”
That night Andy Lack went to his apartment and fired him.
“Matt is still feeling a lot of shame,” the insider said. “But he is angry because he certainly wasn’t the only person in TV doing this, but he has taken the fall.”
He recently told one friend, “The world is a dark place.”
