Katie Couric Feared Her ‘Today’ Spot Was Being Threatened by NBC Colleague

Katie Couric‘s memoir, Going There, hits shelves on Oct. 26, and the television journalist is not pulling any punches on the page. The Daily Mail shared a few excerpts from the book ahead of its release date, and in one of the stories, Couric admits that she felt major competition between her female co-hosts on Today, particularly Ashleigh Banfield. Couric explained that she felt like she needed to “protect her turf” during her tenure on the morning show from 1991 through 2006. 

The 64-year-old wrote that there was “someone younger and cuter was always around the corner,” and Banfield was nearly a decade younger than her and joined in the early 2000s. “For a minute there, Ashleigh Banfield was the next big thing; I’d heard her father was telling anyone who’d listen that she was going to replace me,” Couric wrote. “In that environment, mentorship sometimes felt like self-sabotage.”

Couric also shaded Deborah Norville, whom she replaced In 1992, saying that she had a “major relatability problem,” claiming that a colleague said that “with Deborah, people feel like they need to get dressed before they turn on the TV” and blamed her “relentless perfection.” Couric also opened up about how her job on Today affected her relationship with her husband Jay Monahan. Monahan passed away In 1998 from colon cancer, and Couric said that Today “took up residence in our marriage like an overbearing houseguest.” At one point, Couric remembers telling Monahan “I used to want to be the most popular girl in school. Now I’m the most popular girl in the country,” which Monahan called “gross.”

After Monahan’s death, Couric dated around, and she admitted that ex-boyfriend Brooks Perlin, who was 17 years younger than her, was a “mid-life crisis” and TV producer Tom Werner was a “textbook narcissist.” She also turned her ire onto Martha Stewart, quipping that she required “some healthy humbling (prison will do that . . .) to develop a sense of humor.”