When Meredith Vieira left Today, veteran reporter Ann Curry was selected to fill the co-anchor seat next to the now disgraced Matt Lauer. Ann remained as the co-anchor for only one year. And it was an awkward, uncomfortable year at that. Even at the time, most people suspected Lauer’s Machiavellian machinations behind Ann’s ousting. Nothing gave more evidence to that than Ann’s final appearance on Today when she was physically repulsed by Lauer’s touch on camera and basically admitted she was being forced out. Since her departure, Lauer has finally been outed for the predator he is and Ann, although classy, has not hidden the fact that Lauer’s been a creep his whole career. So, with all we know now, what happened that resulted in Ann losing her job? In a recent interview, Ann said she still has no idea.

Eight years after Ann Curry made her exit from Today, the journalist is still asking questions about her abrupt firing from the NBC morning show.

In a new interview for Elle’s September issue, Curry, 63, revealed that her departure from the show “still hurts.”

“I still don’t really understand,” she said about her firing from the show. “I know I did nothing wrong. I know I was good at my job.”

After barely a year of co-hosting Today with Matt Lauer, Curry left the NBC morning show in 2012 — an ordeal that was rumored to have been caused in part to a lack of “chemistry” with Lauer. At the time, there were also reports claiming he had played a part in forcing Curry out.

“The bottom line is that it still hurts,” she said. “It honestly hurts really deeply, because I really think I did nothing wrong.”

While her exit from the show was a painful experience, Curry said leaving Today had a silver lining. “But in spite of the pain of it, which still lingers, I know that I contributed to some people suffering less,” she said.

Curry added, “But I tell you, it was tough. It was hard to walk that line, to not add more [suffering]. Boy, oh boy, was it tough.”

[From People]

I used the People excerpt because it’s more concise but the whole interview Ann gave to Elle is very good and worth the time to read. I really felt what Ann was saying. I have many insecurities, but I am fairly confident when it comes to my work ethic. I’ve been asked back or rehired by many companies after I’d left. But I was let go from one bartending position and to this day, I have no idea why. A lot of evidence points to the owner just not liking me, but I was a great bartender for her restaurant and my customers loved me. I was also unfailingly honest, so it wasn’t that. But one day she called me to tell me she’d given my shifts away and the only shifts available to me were those that conflicted with my school schedule, which she knew. It was an insignificant bartending job at a restaurant that went out of business within a year and two other restaurants offered me shifts as soon as they heard I was available. But even now, 24 years later, it still hurts. And my story isn’t even a fraction of what Ann went through. I can’t believe Ann isn’t shouting from the middle of Times Square to any reporter who will listen how she was screwed. But that’s the point, I don’t think Ann cares about the bs, her removal from that role and the public discussion about it cast a cloud over the work she’d done and that was extremely unfair to Ann. Her thoughts on this make perfect sense to me, that it doesn’t matter who liked her or why, she was irreproachable in her role and that should have stood above everything else.

When Lauer’s seedy underside was publicly exposed, we learned that Ann had gone to management on behalf of a few of his victims and diligently fought for their protection. And yet, Lauer left Today with a huge severance and a book deal while Ann is, eight years later, still trying to find a prominent position in news. So let’s never forget what a boys club these networks are and how far they will go not only to protect their own, but to destroy the poor, good people fighting the system. Like I said, it’s a good interview and worth your time. But it will also leave a pit in your stomach wondering where the justice for Ann is.

Photo credit: Ann Curry’s Instagram and WENN/Avalon