Former NBC and Fox News host Megyn Kelly praised former NBC stars Meredith Vieira and Ann Curry for “sounding the alarm” over sexual assault and harassment allegations against former “Today” host Matt Lauer.
Kelly responded to reports that emerged last week from investigative reporter Ronan Farrow’s new Book “Catch and Kill,” alleging that Lauer raped NBC News employee Brooke Nevils during an incident at the Sochi Olympics in Russia in 2014.
“Let’s not lose sight of the forces for good in this story, like former Lauer co-host Ann Curry, who, despite the risks, sounded the alarm on Lauer in 2012 after a young woman complained to her, and Meredith Vieira, who, when confronted with Brooke Nevils’ account, told her to go report it,” Kelly told Page Six.
{mosads}Curry told The Washington Post in 2018 that “A woman approached me and asked me tearfully if I could help her. She was afraid of losing her job … I believed her.”
Curry said she did not name the woman at her request, but she did specifically target Lauer in 2012.
“I told management they had a problem and they needed to keep an eye on him and how he deals with women,” Curry said.
After allegations were made in 2017 about film executive Harvey Weinstein and others in Hollywood and across industries, NBC colleagues reportedly asked Nevils about her relationship with Lauer.
Variety reported that Farrow’s book describes how Vieira was “distraught” when she heard the news and encouraged Nevils to go to NBC Universal’s human resources with a lawyer.
Nevils’s complaint eventually led to Lauer’s firing from NBC.
Lauer has denied the allegations. He published a letter in Variety calling the 2014 incident “extramarital, but consensual.”