Katie Couric Admits It Was ‘Painful’ to Realize Matt Lauer Was Actually ‘Two Very Different People’

It’s been an eye-opening experience. Katie Couric spoke out about her former Today cohost Matt Lauer during a female empowerment event this week, revealing how “painful” it was to discover that he wasn’t the man she thought he was. The journalist shared her thoughts after new assault allegations about Lauer were revealed on October 9.

“It’s been painful for me on many levels, especially when it comes to understanding what was going on with Matt, who I think ultimately turned out to be two very different people, in terms of my relationship with him versus some of the other things that were going on,” Couric, 62, said at the Dress for Success annual Women Who Inspire breakfast in New York City, according to Variety.

“As you can imagine, I’ve thought a lot about this over the last two years because it has been, to use the phrase that many have used, a reckoning,” she continued, while discussing the Me Too movement in further detail.

Lauer, 61, was fired from NBC in November 2017, following sexual harassment allegations. This came as a major shock to fans and many of those who worked with him, including Couric. She and Lauer were coanchors from 1997 until her departure in 2006.

“The accounts I’ve read and heard have been disturbing, distressing, and disorienting and it’s completely unacceptable that any woman at the Today show experienced this kind of treatment,” Couric confessed to PEOPLE in 2018, noting how she never saw this coming. “Matt was a kind and generous colleague who treated me with respect,” she continued.

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Now, Lauer is at the center of controversy again after after Brooke Nevils — a former NBC employee — claims he assaulted her in his hotel room while they were at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, to cover the event. She shared the shocking details about the alleged incident in Ronan Farrow’s tell-all book, Catch and Kill.

Since then, Lauer has denied the claims, alleging that he actually had a consensual extramarital affair with Nevils. “In a new book, it is alleged that an extramarital, but consensual, sexual encounter have previously admitted having, was in fact an assault,” he said in a statement through his lawyer, per Variety. “It is categorically false, ignores the facts and defies common sense.”

Unfortunately, the new allegations against Lauer have been “reopening old wounds” for his ex-wife, Annette Roque, a source exclusively told In Touch. The insider said, “Annette is divorced from Matt, but the pain she’s having to relive right now is still tremendous.”