NEWSKatie Couric Says She Received 'Endless S---' From 'Today' Co-Anchor Bryant Gumbel for Taking Maternity Leave: 'Sexist Attitude'
April 15 2024, Published 4:02 p.m. ET
Katie Couric revealed how she was treated when she spent 15 years at the Today show alongside her co-anchor Bryant Gumbel. During her first pregnancy, she recalled how Gumbel gave her a hard time about leaving the series for a few months.
Katie Couric received backlash from Bryant Gumbel about taking maternity leave.
“He got mad at me because I was doing something on maternity leave, and he was giving me endless s--- for taking a month or two off. I was having my first baby,” Couric told Bill Maher on his "Club Random" podcast. “He was like, ‘Why don’t you just drop it in the field and come back to work right away?'”
Though Couric, 67, later cleared up Gumbel wasn't being serious, she noted how she was constantly surrounded by men at work.
“He was kidding, but he was giving me a lot — he was goofing on me and giving me a lot of s---, but it was emblematic of sort of an incredibly sexist attitude,” she said.
Maher, 68, also noted how "there was a tradition of an old boys network" at NBC, to which Couric agreed with.
Katie Couric worked alongside Bryant Gumbel for many years.
“It was a very different environment,” she said. “Lots of fraternization, a polite way of saying ‘inter-office schtupping.'”
“I don’t want to use the term microaggressions, but if you think of the true definition, it was replete with microaggressions,” she added.
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Bryant Gumbel worked on the 'Today' show.
This isn't the first time the journalist got candid about her time at the news company. “I think sexism is still one of the most acceptable-isms,” Couric said on her podcast "Next Question" with guest Brooke Shields. “But less so than it used to be.”
“I was criticized for what I wore my first night on the evening news. I got criticized for the way I held my hands. These really dopey things that a male anchor would never be subjected to,” she explained. “A lot of people didn’t like outsiders. It’s a pretty insular place. People go there and kind of spend their entire careers there.”
Matt Lauer got fired from the 'Today' show in 2017.
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In 2021, the TV personality was asked if "fame and money" changed her when she left Today for CBS in 2006.
“I think there were times when probably the hubris got to me,” she replied.
“I think it gets to everybody, and you have to kind of level set,” she continued, though she noted she “always had my priorities straight.”
