What Billy's Still Hiding
Just as Billy Bush breaks his silence and asks for forgiveness, sources tell In Touch he made more comments about women
Call it his apology tour. On May 21, The Hollywood Reporter published a cover story on disgraced TV host Billy Bush — his first interview since he was fired from Today last October. He was canned days after a 2005 hot mic tape of him engaging in lewd, misogynistic banter with then- Apprentice host Donald Trump was leaked. Billy was heard egging on now–president Trump when he talked about grabbing women by their private parts. After his mega-apology interview, Billy appeared on Today rival Good Morning America on May 22 to explain himself — again — and expound on how much he says he’s changed since the scandal torpedoed his career.
But as he attempts to stage a comeback, there’s more he’s not sharing. “Despite Billy’s big mea culpa, he’s still hiding a number of things about himself,” a TV insider exclusively tells In Touch. Billy has gone into great detail about how much he has changed and called the exchange with Trump “a bad moment a long time ago.” Not so, multiple sources tell In Touch exclusively. In fact, Billy made many misogynistic and obscene comments, objectifying women’s bodies while he was at Access Hollywood.
Billy was untouchable. For years, he was incredibly close to an Access Hollywood exec who let him do almost whatever he wanted. “Billy and [the exec] talked about women like that all the time,” says an industry source. “There was this morning weather anchor on CBS, and every other morning [the exec] and Billy would talk…‘ Wow, you see what she was wearing?’ Or [the exec] would say, ‘ Did you see her rack?’ or ‘Check out her boobs this morning!’ Billy laughed and egged him on. We’re not talking about Boy Scouts here. Billy would tape every morning for Access Hollywood, and racy stuff about women would fly from his mouth at times in between tapings.”
Billy laughed about the Trump conversation at the time. “Billy knew they were rolling [when the tape was shot]. That was no accident,” says the industry source. “And he brought it to [the exec]. They watched it. They were joking about
it. It got a big laugh. A bunch of people saw it. There it was — two very important people from an NBC business perspective acting like idiots. So they laughed and then sat on it for years. It got buried.”
In the Hollywood Reporter interview, Billy also showed he didn’t buy Trump’s explanation for the lewd comment. He said Trump’s justification that it was “locker-room banter” isn’t true. “I’m in a lot of locker rooms, I am an athlete,” Billy says, “and no, that is not the type of conversation that goes on.” Asked about Trump saying, “Anyone who knows me knows that those words don’t reflect who I am,” Billy simply said: “I don’t know who he is.” And when asked to consider that he got fired over the scandal and Trump became president, Billy said, “I will admit the irony is glaring.” (A rep for Billy wrote to In Touch that he never made lewd comments about women: “Our understanding is to the contrary.”)
Billy also says he and his former NBC colleague, Matt Lauer, get along. That’s not true, multiple sources tell In Touch. Matt really does not like Billy, whom he’d worked with for barely three months before the hot mic debacle. In his Hollywood Reporter interview, Billy claims that after the tape surfaced, he heard from Today’s Matt, Al Roker, Savannah Guthrie, Tamron Hall, Hoda Kotb, Kathie Lee Gifford and more former colleagues. The story also makes a point to say Matt invited Billy to lunch ( but doesn’t reveal if the lunch ever happened). But, says the network insider, “Matt couldn’t stand Billy” when he was at Today. “Matt and Al wanted him gone!” ◼