Over Matt Lauer’s 21 years at NBC, the “Today Show” may have come to seem like the “Matt Lauer Show.”
Lauer, 59, has been an icon, a stalwart of morning TV news and arguably the most recognizable face of NBC News. He landed many of the big interviews and consequently helped shape the network’s coverage of some of the most pressing news and cultural issues of the day.
But with Lauer’s firing for inappropriate s-xual conduct at the workplace, his on-air conduct in certain key moments is now being revisited. In particular, many writers are noting disturbing patterns of behavior in the way he sometimes treated women he interviewed for the “Today Show” or for NBC.
To these writers, Lauer’s sometimes demeaning treatment of female interview subjects shows the extent to which he, in his powerful position, either reflected or shaped the often negative and s-xist ways our society talks and thinks about women.
For example, Lauer was widely criticized for his back-to-back interviews with 2016 presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. With Trump, he showed a curious deference and lobbed softball questions. But with Clinton, he repeatedly interrupted her and grilled her on her judgment and fitness to be president, Time magazine said.
“Lauer had turned what should have been a serious discussion into a pointless ambush. What a waste of time,” Clinton wrote in her memoir “What Happened.”
A more leering and s-xually provocative tone dominated his 2012 interview with Anne Hathaway. The way he questioned her may have set off a hostile Oscar season for the actress, who, co-starring in “Les Misérables,” was widely derided and mocked online by so-called “Hatha-haters,” outlets like Time and Vox have suggested.
“His coverage (helped) set the tone for the way Americans think about a given news story — and when that story is about women, his coverage (could) take on an ogling, proprietary tone, often with the subtext that women’s bodies are both shameful and owned by the public,” wrote Vox writer Constance Grady.
While doing press for “Les Misérables,” Hathaway attended an event at which she was infamously photographed as she got out of her car. The aggressive paparazzi shot captured a view up her skirt and reportedly of her private parts.
A short time later, Hathaway appeared on the “Today Show,” presumably to talk with Lauer about “Les Misérables” and her role as Fantine. Hathaway was nominated for and subsequently won a best supporting actress Oscar for playing a young woman in 19th-century Paris who is forced into prostitution to support her young daughter.
But instead of focusing on “Les Mis,” Lauer opened the interview in a suggestive, almost sneering way. He said, “Seen a lot of you lately.”
In a clip preserved by podcast and radio show Majority Report — and labeled “Anne Hathaway owns creepy Matt Lauer” — Hathaway tries to graciously laugh off his provocation.
She flashes her movie star smile and says, “I’d be happy to stay home, but the film.”
But Lauer won’t let up on grilling her about the paparazzi photo reportedly showing a view of Hathaway’s private parts. He raised his eyebrows in a suggestive way and said, “Let’s just get it out of the way. You had a little wardrobe malfunction the other night.”
He then asked her a question that seemed to imply, in his mind anyway, that it was her fault that an aggressive photographer took an inappropriate photo. He asked, “What’s the lesson learned from something like that? Other than that you keep smiling, which you always do.”
As the Majority Report hosts say, Hathaway managed to “own” Lauer by moving the conversation from that particular photo to the issue of society’s exploitation of women’s s-xuality.
“It was obviously an unfortunate incident,” Hathaway said. “It kind of made me sad on two accounts. One was that I was very sad that we live in an age (when) someone takes a picture of another person in a vulnerable moment, and rather than delete it and do the decent thing, sells it. And I’m sorry that we live in a culture that commodifies the s-xuality of unwilling participants.”
With that, Hathaway took the discussion back to her film and to her role, which, she reminded him, was about the s-xual exploitation of another young woman.
Lauer, evidently wanting to get in the last word, laughing complimented Hathaway on executing one of “the most creative turns of questions I’ve ever heard.”
Majority Report co-host Sam Seder proclaimed “What a creepy dude!” and added, “There’s something wrong with this dude!”
Certainly with what writers have called his tone-deaf, “wink-wink” line of questioning, Lauer sounded as if he was trying to humiliate Hathaway or blame her for what happened.
It certainly is instructive to watch this interview in light of Wednesday’s news that Lauer has been accused of s-xual misconduct by at least one woman. NBC also expressed concern that this incident wasn’t “isolated,” and Lauer has been rumored to be a “womanizer” and to have had affairs with subordinates at the network, Page Six reported.
Vox’s Grady said that Lauer’s interview with Hathaway represents an ideology that perpetuates a culture in which men can harass or abuse women in private — and get away with it.
“It’s a reminder that the powerful men who have been abusing women in secret have also shaped the way our culture talks and thinks about women in public,” she said.
