Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb React to New Matt Lauer Rape Allegations: ‘This Is Shocking’
It was a tough morning for Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb as they had to address new rape allegations about their former cohost Matt Lauer on the Today show on Wednesday, October 9.
“I feel like we owe it to our viewers to pause for a moment,” Guthrie, 47, began. “You know, this is shocking and appalling, and I honestly don’t even know what to say about it. I know it wasn’t easy for our colleague Brooke [Nevils] to come forward then, it’s not easy now,” she said, referring to their former NBC News employee who complained about Lauer in the past, which eventually led to his firing in 2017. “We support her and any women who have come forward with claims. It’s just very painful for all of us at NBC and who are at the Today show. It’s very, very, very difficult.”
Kotb, 55, then went on to explain how she was feeling. “I am looking at you, and I am having a weird moment that we were just sitting here, just like this, two years ago,” she said. “Truth be told, Savannah, I did a little prayer upstairs before to just to sort out what we were going to do. I think it’s like you feel like you’ve known someone for 12 years, and I don’t know if you guys have felt like that. You know someone, you know them in and out, and then all of a sudden, a door opens up, and it’s a part of them you didn’t know.”
The Oklahoma native continued, “We don’t know all of the facts in all of this, but they are not allegations of an affair. They are allegations of a crime. I think that is shocking to all of us here who have sat with Matt for many, many years. So, I think we are just going to continue to process this part of this horrific story and as you said, our thoughts are with Brooke. It’s not easy what she did to come forward. It’s not easy at all.”
Guthrie kept herself composed at the end of the segment and admitted what was going on in her head. “I think I speak for all of us, we are disturbed to our core,” she said. “We have a commitment to keep you informed, and we will continue to do that.”
Just hours before Guthrie and Kotb went on the air, Nevils claimed Lauer raped her in his hotel room while they were at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, for work. “It was nonconsensual in the sense that I was too drunk to consent,” she claimed Ronan Farrow’s new book, Catch and Kill, Variety reported. “It was nonconsensual in that I said, multiple times, that I didn’t want to have anal sex.”
Later on, Nevils told Meredith Vieira — her coworker at the time — what had allegedly happened between her and Lauer. Vieira, 65, urged Nevils to talk to human resources with a lawyer, which she did.
In November 2017, Kotb and Guthrie announced Lauer had been fired after an unnamed “colleague” made “a detailed complaint … about inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace.” The former TV anchor has since apologized for his actions.
These days, Lauer has been keeping a low profile in the Hamptons — where he currently resides. Lauer made an appearance in his daughter’s TikTok videos on October 7 — just one month after Lauer and his ex-wife Annette Roque filed for divorce. The former flames share three children: Jack, 18, Romy, 16 and Thijs, 12.
However, Lauer denied that he raped Nevins. “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, Variety reported. “It is categorically false, ignores the facts and defies common sense.”
He added, “I had an extramarital affair with Brooke Nevils in 2014. It began when she came to my hotel room very late one night in Sochi, Russia. We engaged in a variety of sexual acts. We performed oral sex on each other, we had vaginal sex, and we had anal sex. Each act was mutual and completely consensual. The story Brooke tells is filled with false details intended only to create the impression this was an abusive encounter. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
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