For decades, Matt Lauer was the face of American mornings. He was charming, trusted, and charismatic. But behind the bright lights of the Today show, a much darker story was unfolding in the shadows.
Brooke Nevils, a former NBC staffer, is now breaking her silence in a harrowing new memoir, Unspeakable Things. She isn’t just calling him a disgraced anchor—she’s calling him a “monster.”
Today, we dive into the chilling details of the night that changed everything, and the “bloody aftermath” that NBC viewers never saw.
It was 2014, at the Sochi Winter Olympics. Brooke Nevils was a young talent assistant, working under her mentor, Meredith Vieira. After a night of drinks, Lauer joined them. What happened next, according to Brooke, was a nightmare.
She describes being “drunk and alone” in a spinning room when Lauer allegedly forced himself on her. The details are graphic and heartbreaking. Brooke recalls waking up the next morning to find her sheets and clothes “caked with blood.”
She didn’t call it “rape” then. Like so many victims, she was confused. She thought rape only happened with strangers in dark alleys—not with your boss in a five-star hotel. She says, “It hurt to walk. It hurt to sit. It hurt to remember.”
In a desperate attempt to normalize the trauma, she even cleaned the blood herself so the maid wouldn’t see, and sent Lauer a “friendly” email, hoping it was all just a terrible misunderstanding.
But the “misunderstanding” theory shattered a week later. Brooke claims that when she went to Lauer’s apartment to talk, he met her with an armful of towels—telling her they were “just in case, because of what happened last time.”
That was the moment the floor dropped out. Brooke realized he saw the blood in Sochi. He knew he had hurt her. And he was prepared to do it again.
She describes a cycle of abuse that followed—four more instances where she felt trapped by a “power differential” she couldn’t escape. She admits she even initiated one encounter, trying to “take back control,” only to feel like she had implicated herself in her own abuse.
When the truth finally came out in 2017, Lauer was fired within 24 hours. He has consistently denied the allegations, maintaining everything was consensual.
But for Brooke, the damage was done. She spiraled into a world of paranoia and alcohol, eventually landing in a psychiatric ward, feeling “worthless.”
But this story doesn’t end in the dark. Today, Brooke Nevils has rebuilt her life. She’s a mother, a wife, and a survivor. She’s telling her story now for one reason: to reach those who are currently trapped in the same “impossible situation” she once was.
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Because while the world saw a TV icon, Brooke Nevils saw the man behind the mask. And she wants to make sure no one else has to see him that way again.
What do you think about the power dynamics in major networks like NBC?
