Katie Couric accused Bryant Gumbel of having an “incredibly sexist attitude” about her maternity leave when they worked together on the “Today” show.
Couric appeared on Bill Maher’s “Club Random” podcast Sunday where the host discussed Gumbel, whom he called a “friend” and a “guy.”
“He’s a guy, you heard right,” Couric, 67, said with a giant smirk. “He was prickly, but what a talent. It’s such a transparent, eloquent diffuser. When that countdown came – five, four, three, two, one – he would do it perfectly.
“Soft as silk,” Maher, 68, chimed in.
Gumbel began hosting “Today” in 1982 and was joined by Couric in 1991 – the same year she welcomed her first daughter, Ellie. The duo co-anchored together until leaving the series in 1997.
“Complicated guy, though,” Couric continued on the podcast, hinting at not-so-great memories of Gumbel. “I think… a really talented guy, incredibly smart.”
“He got mad at me because I was doing something on maternity leave,” she revealed. “And he was giving me endless crap for taking about a month or two off. I was going to have my first baby.
“I could see it,” Maher replied.
“He said to me, ‘Why don’t you just drop him on the field and come back to work right away or something?'” Couric said, noting that Gumbel made the remark in a tone of joke.
“He made fun of me but gave me a lot of crap. But it was emblematic of a kind of incredibly sexist attitude,” she added.
The Post has contacted Gumbel’s representatives for comment.
Maher then turned the podcast conversation to Couric’s other colleague “Today” Matt Lauer, who was fired from NBC in 2017 following allegations of sexual misconduct in the workplace.
“Well, obviously there was a tradition of an old boys’ network,” Maher said, parroting Gumbel’s supposedly off-putting remark.
“Yes, yes,” Couric agreed. “It was a very different environment, very different. And a lot of fraternization, a polite way of saying “schtupping” within the office.
“And women had to put up with more. They just did it,” Maher said. “I mean, you know, not to get all fuzzy and Lifetime Channel about it, but people like you and Barbara Walters or just like comedians of a certain age, you really have to take your hat off to them because It was more difficult.”
“Yes, it was,” Couric agreed.
Couric left NBC in 2006 and was the first female anchor of a national evening newscast on “CBS Evening News” until 2011. She then worked at ABC and Yahoo News before launching her own media company in 2017.
New York Post
