Who Is Brooke Nevils? 5 Things to Know About the Former NBC Staffer Who Accused Matt Lauer of Sexual Assault

Brooke Nevils is coming forward over a decade after the alleged sexual assault by Matt Lauer.

Growing up in St. Louis, the former Today producer made a habit of watching the NBC show every morning before school. She later studied at Johns Hopkins University and graduated with a double major in political science and creative writing in 2007.

The following year, Nevils officially joined the NBCUniversal page program and was assigned to Today.

While she moved to New York City to pursue a career at NBC, Nevils has since relocated to Maryland with her husband and children.

While working as an NBC Page, Nevils scored a 10-month gig as Meredith Vieira's personal assistant and assistant producer for A Leap of Faith: A Meredith Vieira Special. She eventually became a producer and was tapped to assist in NBC's Winter Olympics coverage in Sochi, Russia, in 2014.

"I was mainly there just as a talent assistant," she shared on NPR's "Fresh Air" podcast. "So, it was my job to make sure things went as smoothly as possible for [Vieira] and the other talent that was there."

She also worked in other NBC shows, including 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? and Headliners.

In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the rise of the #MeToo movement, Nevils filed a formal complaint with NBC in 2017, accusing Lauer of raping her in his hotel room at the 2014 Sochi Olympics. The network fired Lauer within 24 hours.

"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," the Today show announced in a statement.

Two years later, Lauer defended himself in a 2019 letter to Variety. According to the former news anchor, he and Nevils had an "extramarital affair" and stated that what happened was "completely consensual."

Nevils recalled the incident during her interview on "Fresh Air," noting she and Vieira were in a bar with other colleagues when Lauer arrived and sat with them.

"These were two people [Lauer and Vieira] that I had admired as journalists, as people, since I was a little girl. And I truly could not believe I was sitting there with a seat at the table with them. And I think I got carried away," she recalled on the podcast.

After Nevils drank the vodka shots he ordered, Lauer reportedly invited her to his hotel room where he allegedly sexually assaulted her. She explained she did not initially report the assault for several reasons, but the #MeToo movement later helped her speak out.

"Rape is a word I hardly ever use because when you hear the word rape, you think of a guy in a ski mask in the dark alley and fighting for your life," said Nevils. "And that's just not the reality of how sexual assaults happen when most of the time it's someone that you know and trust. So we don't really have language to talk about this and we certainly didn't in 2017 when I was reporting it."

She added, "It takes a very long time to really process and get to the point where you can talk about it in those terms, and those terms are devastating. When you say sexual assault, when you say rape, your life changes. You have a target on your back. Every single thing that you say or that you don't say becomes evidence."

A decade after the alleged sexual assault, Nevils detailed the aftermath in her memoir, Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe.

"Back then, I had no idea what to call what happened other than weird and humiliating. But then there was the pain, which was undeniable. It hurt to walk. It hurt to sit. It hurt to remember," she wrote, in part.

She added, according to the excerpt shared by The Cut, "In the end, I decided the math didn't matter. I would never have asked anyone else to risk their career to come forward against Matt Lauer. It was a suicide mission — but when I looked back at my life since Sochi, it seemed plain enough that it'd been a suicide mission all along. NBC could investigate my claims or not, but at least I would have some small hope of being able to live with myself again. And it would be a confidential complaint. I could finally put it behind me and move on. But that's not the way it worked out."

Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe is out on February 3.