'We Are Disturbed to Our Core'
The women who were closest to Matt Lauer speak out. What did they know?
When NBC fired Today show anchor Matt Lauer in November 2017 for “inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace,” there was no doubt that Matt had behaved badly. But when Brooke Nevils — the previously anonymous employee whose allegations led to Matt’s exit — came forward recently with her claim that Matt anally raped her in his hotel room while they were covering the 2014 Sochi Olympics in Russia, jaws hit the floor. “It was nonconsensual in the sense that I was too drunk to consent,” Brooke, who was Meredith Vieira’s assistant at the time, has said. “It was nonconsensual in that I said, multiple times, that I didn’t want to have anal sex.”
Now, Matt’s former colleagues at Today are struggling to come to terms with the disturbing new details about a man many considered to be a friend. “It’s like you feel like you’ve known someone for 12 years…and all of a sudden a door opens up and it’s a part of them you didn’t know,” co-anchor Hoda Kotb, 55, told viewers on Oct. 9, pointing out that Brooke’s allegations were not of an affair — as many reports and Matt himself have characterized as what happened — but “of a crime. That’s shocking to all of us who have sat with Matt for many, many years.” Co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, 47, tearfully echoed Hoda’s sentiments, calling the rape claim (which Matt denied in a lengthy open letter, insisting Brooke was “a fully enthusiastic and willing partner”) “shocking and appalling. We are disturbed to our core.”
AN OPEN SECRET?
But according to Brooke, Matt’s antics were known to many at NBC long before he was fired. Brooke, 35, said she had already told “a million people” about her situation with the then-married father of three, with whom she was intimate on multiple occasions following the alleged assault. (She insisted her interactions with Matt, 61, were “completely transactional. It was not a relationship.”) When she confessed the horrific extent of what had happened to Meredith, who was reportedly distraught and advised her to immediately report Matt to higherups, a source says it was an “open secret” that Brooke had been the one to blow the whistle on the network’s golden boy.
Matt cryptically claimed in his open letter that “there are people who fully understand the actual dynamic that existed between Brooke and me.” He said those people have reached out to him, albeit “reluctantly and quietly,” and he’s said he hopes they’ll come forward to share “a vital truth, even if it may seem unpopular.” Yet in the days following Brooke’s bombshell claims, not a single person came forward to defend him.
Hoda and Savannah certainly never will. “They knew Brooke. That’s why they’re on her side,” the source tells In Touch. “They feel duped by Matt, whom they truly loved and respected. Matt was definitely living a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde existence — but what makes it worse is that he was doing it right under their noses.” ◼