I feel like this is the October series we weren’t expecting: The Katie Couric Is Deplorable series. Couric’s memoir, Going There, comes out at the end of the month. Excerpts and quotes from the piece have been leaked and released for the past week, and Couric sounds completely awful at every level. Couric sounds – in her own words – like someone who hated every woman she ever met, who treats household staff like trash, who thinks she’s being clever when really she’s just desperate for relevancy. One of the stories in the book is about Couric’s nanny, who she refers to as Doris in the book. The real woman is named Nancy Poznek, and she is not happy about what Couric wrote. Couric made it sound like Poznek had significant mental health issues, that Poznek was trying to break up Couric’s first marriage, that Poznek fostered a creepy codependency between the two women. Poznek is pissed and she gave her exclusive to the Daily Mail. Some highlights:
Poznek says Couric was a gross mess: It was Couric, Poznek says, who heavily relied on HER to take care of the television star at home, just as she needed constant coaching from producers at NBC’s Today show in the early 1990s. Poznek, who worked for the family from 1991 to 1994, said Couric’s home was such a mess that the TV anchor wouldn’t shower all weekend because she was so exhausted, and that working for her was like nannying a ‘teenage boy’ in addition to taking care of baby daughter Ellie.
Couric’s marriage problems had nothing to do with her: Poznek had a front row seat as Couric and her first husband Jay Monahan drifted apart once she became a television star, only having sex three times in the past three years Monahan had confided to her – on New Year’s Eve. She claims that Couric was so overwhelmed, Monahan didn’t feel he could tell her he had stomach problems and was popping Tums antacid ‘like candy.’ His health problems later developed into colorectal cancer that killed him at the age of 42 and Poznek claims that Couric was ‘guilty’ because she ‘wasn’t around for him all those years’.
Couric’s NBC bosses learned to contact Poznek: Soon Poznek’s role extended to waking Couric up at 4am so she could get to the Today studio. NBC would call Poznek and tell her to make sure Couric had the things she needed because she was more organized than her boss. When Couric came home she and Poznek would go out for a couple of hours and then the ‘packet’ – material to prepare for the next day’s show – would arrive from NBC and Couric would have to study it. Poznerk said: ‘She was not a smart person, as in she’s studied the packet but Jeff Zucker helped her through it.’
Couric is as fake as they come: Pozek said that she was turned off by Couric’s manufactured charm that she deployed for her job. She said: ‘She’d say to Jay and me: “I have to go out and schmooze.” I’ve seen her operate, I was with her when she was interviewed by People magazine, she reels these people in, they think she’s their best friend. As soon as she goes out she puts on that smile and that cutesy thing. Now she’s too old for that cutesy thing.’
OH MY GOD: Meanwhile, when she got home, Couric would discard clothes all over the house and her room looked like a ‘disaster.’ Monahan would have to push Couric into the shower because she wouldn’t wash all weekend, Poznek claimed. ‘One time when we were in Key West, Jay said to me, come on you gotta come with me. He took me up to the bedroom, she was in the bathroom and he said look – it was her pillow, she’d picked her nose all night, all the (boogers) were lined up,’ Poznek said. ‘She was like that. She’ll drink out of a milk carton and when her underwear were dirty she’ll turn them inside out’.
Men didn’t make passes at Couric: Couric rarely cooked and didn’t diet – Poznek recalled that she was ‘built like a little wrestler’ and ‘never saw a man make a pass at her – Jay had nothing to worry about there.’
There’s a ton of other stuff, intimate stuff about Katie’s first marriage and how both Katie and Jay confided in Poznek constantly, and how their marriage was not great at all. It’s all just… three deeply dysfunctional people and their dysfunctional relationships. That’s all it was. It wasn’t like Couric claimed, where Poznek was trying to destroy her marriage. It probably wasn’t like Poznek claimed, where Couric couldn’t do a thing without her. My guess is that Poznek was incredibly close to both Jay and Katie… and then Katie was the one who got petty and jealous. The booger thing…my God. And to not wash for an entire weekend? EW.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
LOLOL, this headline
How about the pics of Couric sniffing Billy Joel’s underwear when she rented his beach house? I hate reading the Daily Mail but the interview (and accompanying photos) with the nanny was a train wreck I couldn’t look away from.
It wasn’t underwear; looked like swimming trunks or shorts (as in short pants). And to be fair, the pic didn’t look pervy, like she was doing it for “real”; it did look jokey.
HOWEVER… I can’t believe he rented out the house and left personal stuff there for whomever he rented to to go through, AND I can’t believe someone would go through someone else’s closets/drawers! AND take pics of handling all of it.
To be fair, the pic showed her holding up SWIMMING trunks, or cargo-kind of shorts, NOT underwear.
HOWEVER… I can’t believe BJ would rent out his house and leave personal items in closets and drawers for someone to find and pick through, AND I can’t imagine being in someone’s home and going through the closets and drawers! That’s SO invasive!
This nanny is REALLY putting it all out there. There must be soooo much animosity between the two of them to share the kinds and amount of things she shared. Yikes!
Katie is grotesque. But after working on set for 18-sometimes 20 hour days all week, with an 11 PM Friday and 4 AM Monday call, I’ve spent plenty of weekends collapsed in exhaustion.
Nanny sounds like a petty jerk but Katie is a monster so it’s a wash. At least something got washed? Lol.
Yeah, I’m really sick of this performative hygiene thing that’s popular right now. None of us have ever gone two days without showering? Like come on.
I often do, but not when I have to be around other people!
@red ugh me too
Same. All of us have gone without a shower. I had a baby during the worst part of COVID last year. I went back to work (from home) 8 weeks after giving birth. I have been home all day since the COVID shutdown with a baby (now basically a toddler), two big dogs, and a full-time job. I have a babysitter that comes in 2-3 days a week for 4 hours at a time. There are literally days when I don’t even REMEMBER the last time I showered. I sometimes go 24 hours without changing my clothes. I never used to be like this but between COVID and everything I’m juggling my personal hygiene could be better… but even on days when I’m not showering I usually find time to freshen up and change my underwear. If I’m really lucky I might run a comb through my hair. Katie’s a gross person in general, but her not showering over the weekend doesn’t bother me.
Lockdown taught me that I can tolerate three days of myself unshowered
I love my dry shampoo!
Thank you! I shower when I feel like it, not according to some schedule.
It’s incredibly dull and unnecessarily judgy. Get over yourself and let people be already. And focus on actual gossip, not bathing habits.
No matter what I do during the day, the shower at the end of the day is one of the best parts! Then, doing my skincare routine, body lotion, foot cream, lip balm and then into bed. Just perfection and pure relaxation!
The pillow story is disgusting, and it sounds like they were all way too involved with each other. Why was Jay showing the nanny Katie’s pillow? Why was NBC calling the nanny to wake Katie up? That’s like something out of the Nanny Diaries and it sounds dysfunctional all around.
That said – I’m not grossed out by the not-showering-all-weekend thing. i’m sure by the time the weekends rolled around KC was exhausted and probably not having to shower and get made up and look perfect was a relief.
Rewearing underwear though is disgusting. There’s a huge difference between not showering for two days and THAT.
Agree with rewearing underwear – it’s just nasty. Just put on fresh ones.
Nudity is preferable to dirty panties.
I don’t get the rewearing old undies. She is rich enough to have endless supplies of fresh underwear or having someone come in regularly to wash her clothes and her house. She is also rich enough to have a personal assistant to do all those other jobs with the network. so I would be pissed as nanny to be doing those jobs very likely uncompensated.
Agree. Two days without a shower is not a big deal unless you’ve worked out/been outside. Rewearing underwear is DISGUSTING. Who does that??
That little blurb made me think there was something happening with the nanny … if that is accurate it was to mock and belittle Katie which tells me the two were way too intimate regardless of if they were physical .
I’m surprised Katie didn’t make the nanny sign an NDA. That being said, I don’t think Katie needed to talk about the nanny in her book.
I agree. The nanny has nothing to do with her spilling all of her hatred out. KC is now a pariah in all of her circles, I would imagine.
Whoa Nanny!
The gloves are off now.
This doesn’t make anyone sound good, including the nanny.
Agree. They both look bad. I’m side eyeing anyone spilling every intimate detail of their employers lives to the Daily Mail, even if they’re a jerk like Couric. So what if she was too exhausted to shower on weekends or drank milk from the carton. She said a lot and spilling details about her marriage seem wrong. Why keep staff if they don’t like you and you don’t like them. Talk about these women settling scores. What a mess.
This is all so tawdry and distasteful. Ick.
Yeah good lord. If anything this makes me feel more sympathetic for Katie. Like if this story were out of the blue and the bandwagon wasn’t already against her this would be shaming a mom with a highly demanding job for feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. Calling her not that smart? Didn’t diet (read: not hollywood skinny)? Disorganized in her own damn home? Come on. And the fact that she knows how many times Katie and her husband had sex doesn’t disprove that she was way too entrenched in their relationship. That’s not the type of admission a man makes to a woman about his wife unless he is crossing some boundaries. That’s getting into emotional affair territory. Yeesh all around here.
Agree. This interview makes the nanny look bad.
I mean I used to work a 60-80hour week and I def would go weekends without showering. That’s what weekends were for. I’d wear fresh underwear though lol
Agreed. While Katie sounds awful in a lot of the other posts here, what I read from the nanny’s complaints above is that Katie was completely exhausted by the demands of her job. And when I’m overwhelmed with work stuff, cleaning the house and me takes a back seat to work and to the kids, so if she’s not doing laundry or picking up her clothes – BFD. Finally, it also sounds like the nanny is blaming Katie for her husband getting cancer. He’s a grown man – if he had stomach problems he could go to the doctor on his own, he doesn’t need Katie to tell him to do that. A lot of this piece (aside from the gross pillow story) reads like old-fashioned sexist woman shaming to me.
This!!!! Thank you. I will not be joining the pile on either
I agree. I don’t know what Katie said about the nanny to piss her off so much, but it sounds like sexist shaming, jealousy and revenge. Very petty and nobody is looking good here.
Uhm, LOL, where was the sympathy for the nanny when KC was making same allegations about the nanny in the memoir? And what woman shaming CBers being accused of? Should’t KC have known better than to attach the nanny in her memoir? Of course the nanny is going to strike right back, what was KC even thinking? That the nanny would take this sitting down? Big miscalculation on Couric’s part, there’s absolutely no women shaming from anyone.
Katie is a piece of work but insinuating that she contributed to her husband’s cancer is way out of line.
Agreed. I don’t care how vile Katie Couric is, or how crappy a boss she is, she did not cause her husband’s cancer. That was a low blow.
“she was more organized than her boss”
My friend’s five-year-old is more organized than her boss.
Couric should have had a personal assistant, life coach and additional help instead of putting tasks on the nanny that was outside her job description and resented and probably underpaid for. This is “whatever happened to baby Jane” level she said, she said nastiness.
That is some nasty ish!
The not showering for two days is not a big thing because Katie was exhausted. The underwear? The picking the nose & lining it up on the pillow ..that’s an OCD worse nightmare.
Well, well well, LOL 😂😂I guess “going there” was NOT that smart on KC’s part now, was it? LOL. Oh well, KC threw the first punch I suppose, sooooo……..🤷🏽♀️🤷🏽♀️ROTFALOL😂🤣
Petty perhaps, but I’d do the same if someone wrote a book about me seducing someone else’s husband when I was tasked with keeping that someone employed and alive for years. I fully believe the nanny by the way cause you couldn’t make these details up. Just disgusting all around.
I’m a little puzzled as to why she’d need the nanny to wake her up. Couldn’t she just go to sleep earlier to wake up on time?
Or set an alarm clock??
Then again, perhaps she had illusions of royalty, having someone come in to draw open the curtains, with a tray of tea/coffee, to signal it was time to arise. lol
I have had friends organize each other to come into my home bearing coffee and literally pull me out of bed for various early AM events. I’m a fully functional human being, they just know me well enough to understand that I’m a night person and it actually hurts to get out of bed in the morning.
So I sort of understand. But that said, it’s not like they do it for my JOB! And it’s not like I’d remotely consider a job that required me to wake up at 3AM. (I regularly take overnight shifts at work, because it’s easy for me to stay up, just not to wake up!)
From the headline, I was kind of hoping some octogenarian had crawled out of the woodwork to say, “Even as a child, little Katie was no good! I have a bowl of mints on the table dear, help yourself.”
I thought that too! Lol!
I’m not sure what Katie wrote because I haven’t read it but, this housekeeper sounds super fu***ng petty, to be honest. She is saying Katie was built like a wrestler, Katie picked her nose, Katie was fake, Katie was lazy on weekends, Katie didn’t have sex with her husband enough.
Damn, that is some catty stuff right there.
Yes. they obviously hate each other. this is awful all round.
Eh…considering what Couric wrote about the Nanny? She’s fighting back with her only weapon: her version.
wow I haven’t been paying attention to the disaster memoir, but why would you talk about someone who has so much shit on you and hasn’t signed an NDA and it doesn’t occur to you that this might come back to bite you in the ass?
I guess this this is karma at work here?
lol if you decide to attack someone in your memoir, make sure that person doesn’t know intimate secrets about you! So very gross!
Love how people are more outraged about Katie not showering or changing her undies than her rummaging in the underwear of her vacation home host and SMELLING INSIDE HIS BOXER SHORTS—now that is really twisted and the nanny even has a photo of Katie doing it that the Fail included in the article…
As an ex-nanny for some high level individuals –the minute I read Couric went after the nanny, I knew a story like this would come out. It was a major mistake on Couric’s part. We know EVERYTHING–and we know the absolute worst about you, including, as she indicates, what you don’t want your spouse to know.
Also–if you’re going to publicly attack someone, it’s characterless to go after a person who is not a public figure and can’t tell their side of the story. Except–she did, “thanks” to the Daily Mail. I left one situation with bad feelings on both sides (a disagreement over travel), and it would have devastated me both personally and professionally for my employer to put out only her side of the story.
Ugly on all sides. I don’t understand leaving a legacy of bitterness as your memoir. Very unfortunate.
I have no idea who Katie Kouric is beyond she was a newsanchor, but this sounds a bit like depression to me, that and maybe entitlement and the organizing skills or a butterfly (clutterbugger here).
I thought so too and why I feel icky reading this.
Now, why would you pass off someone that knows about your dirty draws?
Question 2: why are you so dirty?
To quote Katie here “ew”
Alright, so in my late 20’s I worked as a personal assistant to a number of very high powered and wealthy people in Manhattan (nobody famous) and honestly this level of “co-dependency” is very, very, very, VERRRRY normal, it IS the job. Your job isn’t to do the tasks that would be required of you in an office. Yes, you do do A LOT of that, but that actually isn’t the job. Your job is to be their person’s mother, and their daughter, as well as their father, their son, their priest, their rabbi, their best friend, their psychiatrist, their nurse, their maid, as well as their babysitter and nanny for THEMSELVES – as well as their children.”
Imagine being a 20-something girl from nowhere, with no “important” accomplishments, who still feels like a teenager, and this 50-something high level executive is crying on your shoulder for your support and counsel nightly. I’m speaking about women here, I only worked with women, I’m sure it’s exactly the same as men, I’m just saying there was no sexual element there.
Like… I’d be surprised if her relationship with her assistant WASN’T like that. Like genuinely shocked.
It’s amazing how so many of these really upper level people identify internally as lost children who want a mommy figure around them who will always be there to comfort them and take care of them and make everything better and bring them their hot glass of milk in bed. I will say, people who are assistants to these figures are seriously some of the most impressive, bad-ass, unflappable, productive people you will ever meet and they are almost invariably VERY YOUNG and have come from nothing.
There’s absolutely nothing like coordinating with other assistants of high level people, it’s closer to clockwork than anything I’ve ever experienced anywhere. I’ve never met more flawlessly competent people in any other line of work than that.
Lola you are totally correct. I was once a high level assistant as well. It was fucking nuts. Lololololol.
Lola, I know nothing of this world, but I can tell you right now that I’d rather read your memoirs than Katie’s!
I could write an unbelievable memoir, but honestly… I would never feel right doing it because these people didn’t abuse me. I knew that a major part of this sort of job was to provide incredible amounts of emotional labor, and I signed on to it willingly and knowingly. They made themselves vulnerable to me and so I wouldn’t want to stab them in the back, even if I thought “WTF” many times just because so many things were surreal and bizarre.
There are people who are abusive to their assistants – verbally, psychologically, sexually, physically, and everything you can imagine. But just being co-dependent with zero boundaries isn’t inherently abusive, I don’t think, when everyone knows that’s what the job is. None of them violated my own boundaries (I was willing to have a low-boundary situation with them but none of them violated anything I DID have as boundary), but they had ZERO boundaries of their own that would have created space from me. I saw them every which way in all states. Like getting home in the nick of time sobbing and starting to gush from fibroids and just collapsing, and cleaning them all up and making them comfortable like a loving parent.
There’s also the fact that when you move on, if you have had a good relationship with this person, the amount of help they can give you in terms of references and networking is incredible. If you’ve had a good relationship they remain a friend for life and are always there for you. Most assistants do move on though as they get older because the all consuming nature of this means you really do need to be a young person with tons of energy and no kids, no serious partner, or other responsibilities, for the most part.
Reading this on the heels of “Bad Art Friend*” is like reading the “everyone in this story is awful” genre’s fraternal twin.
*https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/magazine/dorland-v-larson.html?searchResultPosition=1
My gut feeling is that neither woman in this story is a reliable narrator.
Also, we have a nanny whom we adore and now consider family, but if things had ever gone sour between us I shudder at the things she could reveal about our messy house and my secret slovenly habits!
Trust me you are not alone in this:)
Then do yourself a favor and never ever attack that person publicly, needlessly, selfishly for profits you don’t need. Don’t expect people to remain loyal under such provoking conditions as the the ones Katie created by thrashing the assistant in her upcoming book. That’s just not most human nature to ignore and I don’t know why Katie didn’t know this, I bet those similarly positioned will not make the same mistake, you included.
@Beenlurking… oh gosh, I would NEVER! First of all I’m not rich or famous so there’s no market for my gossip! And more importantly, even if I could make a quick buck I’d never exploit or sell someone out like that, no matter how much I might dislike them. Maybe that’s WHY I’m not rich or famous, haha, but I’m cool with remaining poor and unknown and in possession of my soul.
I just meant that a nanny’s story of a working woman being tired, depressed, messy, smelly, having marital conflict and picking her nose doesn’t in itself make me think worse of said woman, because a nanny could probably say the same about me on occasion. (Except the undies, that’s just gross if it’s true.) What appalls me is that KC thought it was smart/fair/appropriate to publish her side of this relationship in the first place, a take with which I think you agree!
How dumb is it for Katie to spill the tea on someone who lived in her home?
They could have so much on you! Dumb.
I’m sufficiently gagging now.
Daaaamnnmmmnnn!!!!!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Yikes, you wouldn’t see this in US Weekly’s “Celebrities, they’re just like us.”
Some kind of ugly battle – and if it’s this bad on the outside, imagine what it’s like behind the scenes.
Why isn’t this hatred and secrets from childhood done to Matt Lauer? She’s mean and nasty, but he IS a criminal: rapist, sexual harasser, etc.
Women will always be punished more for doing far less than men. Why don’t they get hold of Matt’s childhood nanny, etc.? Why isn’t he in JAIL? Why was he paid a fortune to leave? Her crime in the end is not being nice.
Matt didn’t choose to write a memoir defaming people who were in his close circle. That’s the difference.
No he chose to rape people which is so much worse!
The headline made me gag.
I don’t think I’ve witnessed a career go up in flames like this since… Armie Hammer. This is… a lot. I unfollowed her on social media this week. I didn’t really pay that much attention to her over the years, but… cannot ever look at her the same way!
I met her at a party in NYC back in her heyday. It was very hard to reconcile the person in front of me with the TV persona. She was a party girl and very immature. She was 48 at the time. I was 29 and kind of embarrassed for her. She was “cutesy” and “teenage boy” at the same time! I had to comment on this post because I absolutely believe every word.
Watson, yes, but so what? It’s worse to “defame” co-workers than to rape women? There is no comparison. Katie doesn’t belong in jail, but Matt does. At worst she’ll pay money damages. He’ll never go to jail. That burns me a hell of a lot more.
I don’t think anybody said Katie is worse than Matt Lauer – just that Katie wrote a book and Matt didn’t.
Yup. This.
EWWWWWWWW!
The bridge that Couric burned was the one that led to her legacy. Oh well.
Did anyone tell Katie this book was a terrible idea, that it reflected poorly??
Is she really that foolish (or arrogant?) to assume it wouldn’t burn bridges?
Genuinely curious as to what her thought process was here…
This is just all really weird. I would not trust the nanny’s words per say. I believe that Couric is awful but the booger story is just bonkers. Who says those things and if that was said by the husband , what was wrong with him involving this person in his marriage. It all sounds sick and wrong to me.
LOL I’ve been a stay at home mom who didn’t shower for 2 or even 3 days before. I’m not saying it was awesome and or anything I strove for LOL but I also didn’t work up much of a sweat walking from the kitchen to the couch to the bedroom to the laundry in my 800 sq ft condo.
Sometimes you’re too tired to shower and that isn’t a moral failing.
I feel like the nanny discredits herself with the personal barbs (she didn’t diet and because of it men didn’t hit on her… the fuck?). It’s clear she hates Katie’s guts and sides with her ex. Having said that Katie sounds like maybe she deserves some animosity, so as always who knows where the truth of the situation lies.
Blaming her for her husband’s cancer is fucked up. He “felt he couldn’t tell her his stomach hurt?” He was a grown man, he didn’t need her permission to see the doctor.
LOL! Whether this story is true or not, did Couric really think people wouldn’t clap back?