For three decades from the 90s to the 10s, Matt Lauer was beamed into millions of homes daily on The Today Show, and all over NBC anytime the network needed to trot out its star journalist. Then the 66-year-old was suddenly fired after sexual misconduct allegations came to light, and he’s been out of the spotlight since. Here’s how that happened.
Lauer dropped out of Ohio University Scripps College of Communication, School of Media Arts and Studies in 1979 to start a TV career, ending up as an on-air reporter. He worked for ESPN and HBO and by 1992 became a co-anchor of a show called Today in New York.
Being at NBC’s flagship building provided him with another opportunity: he would fill in on The Today Show as needed, and in Jan. 1994 e joined the program full time. His career flourished from then and by 1998 he had his own segment, Where in the World is Matt Lauer?
He scored several high-profile interviews over the years, such as Tom Cruise, Prince William, and Vladimir Putin. He was also a well-known presence in NBC’s Olympic Games coverage.
It’s hard to describe just how popular and important Matt Lauer was to the network. He seemed invincible, like he could do no wrong, and that everyone liked him
Matt Lauer sexual misconduct allegations
Lauer’s position at the network was so entrenched that viewers were shocked when NBC suddenly announced he was being fired on Nov. 29, 2017. Here’s the statement from then chairman of NBC News, Andrew Lack:
“On Monday night, we received a detailed complaint from a colleague about inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace by Matt Lauer. As a result, we’ve decided to terminate his employment. While it is the first complaint about his behavior in the over twenty years he’s been at NBC News, we were also presented with reason to believe this may not have been an isolated incident.”
An employee named Brooke Nevils filed the complaint. She said Lauer anally raped her in a hotel room in Russia while the two were in Sochi for the 2014 Winter Olympics. She told her story in a book by Ronan Farrow.
“It hurt so bad. I remember thinking, Is this normal?” she recounted. Earlier in the night, she ran into Lauer at the hotel bar and the two were flirty, so much so that he stole her press credential, which she had to go and retrieve from his room.
He invited her back and she “had no reason to suspect Lauer would be anything but friendly based on prior experience,” per the book. Lauer, in a T-shirt and boxers, pushed her onto the bed and flipped her over, asking if she “liked anal sex.”
Nevils said she was telling Lauer she wasn’t interested when he “just did it,” without any lubrication. She said she “bled for days” afterward.
“It was nonconsensual in the sense that I was too drunk to consent,” she said in the book. “It was nonconsensual in that I said, multiple times, that I didn’t want to have anal sex.”
She claims at one point she was making a goodbye video for a colleague and ex-boyfriend and when she went to Lauer he forced her to perform a sex act on him.
“I was trying to do this nice thing, and I had to give Matt a blow job to get him to film a goodbye video. I just felt sick.” she said.
After he was fired, multiple women came forward and accused Lauer of sexual misconduct. He would allegedly invite women into his office and lock the door with a button under his desk. He allegedly showed one woman his privates and then reprimanded her for not touching him.
He bought a female staffer a sex toy and he loved to ask female employees who they had slept with. In addition, there were allegations that upper management knew about his behavior and turned a blind eye to it. Lauer was the highest-paid person in television news at the time of his firing, pulling in around $20 million a year.
Where is Matt Lauer now?
Since his firing, Lauer has stayed out of the spotlight. He lost a lot of friends and divorced his wife Annette Roque, but the two are reportedly amicable and focused on raising their children Jack, Romy, and Thijs.
He’s been dating PR professional Shamin Abas for the past five years and he spends a lot of time at his home in New Zealand. Time will tell if he ever decides to try and orchestrate a comeback. Or whether it would be successful.