“We clearly are waking up to a reality, an injustice that has been occurring for some time. And I think it will continue to occur until the glass ceiling is finally broken. This is about power, a power imbalance where women are not valued as much as men,” she said.
“Do you believe that Matt Lauer abused his power?” “This Morning” co-host Norah O’Donnell asked.
“You know, I’m trying to do no harm in these conversations,” Curry replied. “I can tell you that I am not surprised by the allegations.”
When pressed about what that meant, she admitted that verbal sexual harassment was pervasive in the workplace.
“I can say that I would be surprised if many women did not understand that there was a climate of verbal harassment that existed. I think it'd be surprising if someone said that they didn’t see that,” she said.
O’Donnell again pressed her on her general statement, asking if this was the case at NBC when she worked there.
“I don’t wanna cause more pain. But no, I’m, you are asking me a very direct question. I’m an honest person. I wanna tell you that it was. Yes. Period,” Curry said.
Back in October, Curry tweeted the now-famous hashtag #MeToo, joining a movement of women and men coming out about sexual harassment and abuse.
When asked about her tweet, she said it has happened to her in “multiple jobs.”
“[It] is about, you know, the idea that I don’t know a single woman—I don’t know a single woman who has not endured some form of sexual harassment. And many women have endured workplace sexual harassment,” she said.
The hosts also asked her about her relationship with Lauer, and whether she believed, as was widely rumored, that Lauer was behind her getting let go as a host for the “Today” show in 2012.
“I’m not the one to ask about that,” she replied. “I don’t know what was all behind it. I do know that it hurt like hell. It wasn’t a fun moment. I’ve learned a great deal about myself. I’ve really at this point let it go.”
She left NBC in 2015, three years after she was let go as a host on “Today,” and started her own multimedia production company. She has been working on a PBS docuseries called “We’ll Meet Again” that is due out on Jan. 23.