Brooke Nevils, the former NBC employee who accused Matt Lauer of sexual assault, will publish a new book next month titled “The Unspeakables,” detailing her relationship with the former “Today” anchor. Nevils first told her story publicly in Ronan Farrow’s 2019 book Catch and Kill. In it, Nevils accused Lauer of rape during the 2014 Sochi Olympics, when he was working with Meredith Vieira. Mr. Lauer denies all charges against him.
“Despite the rounds of vodka shots, the overwhelming power difference, and the bloody underwear and sheets, I would never have used the word ‘rape’ to describe what happened,” Nevils has now written in the book (via The Cut). “To this day, when I hear the word ‘rape,’ I think of masked strangers in dark alleys. At the time, I didn’t know what to call what happened other than bizarre and humiliating. But at the time, I felt an undeniable pain. It hurt to walk, it hurt to sit, it hurt to remember. A startlingly clear thought crossed my mind, but it quickly faded from my consciousness: If someone else had done this to me, I would have gone to the police.
Nevils said one of the reasons she didn’t immediately report the alleged rape to police was because “I was in a bad Russia. Who do I call? Putin? The KGB? It was NBC. Matt Lauer, the longest-serving anchor on Today’s with the richest contract in morning TV’s 60-year history, is reportedly worth $25 million a year.” His point of view was the reality in the news industry at the time, and if you disagreed, you were wrong about it. ”
“Everything must have been my fault,” she continues. “I gave him the wrong idea, couldn’t articulate it, couldn’t convince him, couldn’t stop him, couldn’t find a way out of the situation without getting him into trouble. I should never have shed any blood. There was only one thing to do: smooth things over, and it was my actual job to smooth things over for the talent. That’s at least what I knew how to do.”
Nevils recalled feeling “completely alone and drowning in the mundane” after the incident. She wrote that Lauer emailed her after saying things like: A few days later, she emailed him and asked if he “could have some time to chat” to talk about the encounter. Nevils then sent a second email “literally begging me to call.”
“I couldn’t help it, I was crying and drinking vodka, and at 10:30 or 11 o’clock, who knows what time it was, I used my NBC burner phone to call Matt’s NBC burner phone,” Nevils wrote. “He answered right away. He was obviously sound asleep. I cried and said I really needed to talk to him before I left[Sochi]. I didn’t know what to do. He didn’t seem to understand what I was saying. Then he said — as if he was trying not to wake up — ‘Come see me when you get back to New York.'” Then he hung up. ”
When the two finally met in person at the Today offices the following week, Lauer was “all smiles” and “so disappointed he couldn’t see my email,” Nevils wrote. He reportedly invited her to “come over to his apartment that night. His face was happy, flattering, almost boyish. Apparently to him, that email (that I sent) was a suggestion. Another time. I was just relieved he wasn’t mad.”
“When I arrived, he ushered me quickly through his palatial apartment and into the kitchen, where he offered me a drink – it was vodka – and handed it to me with a grin,” Nevils wrote. “I was there to block out certain memories, to erase them, to replace them with less humiliating ones. Matt’s purpose, apparently, was the opposite. Apparently his purpose was to recreate them. To strengthen them. To repeat them. Embarrassment washed over me as I drank, and I realized, awkwardly late, that Matt was watching me intently like a parent giving medicine to a child, even though he hadn’t had a drink.”
The night ended in a sexual encounter, Nevils wrote. Lauer allegedly brought a “full towel” into her bedroom, which she thought was a nod to the blood that caused the chaos during the Sochi incident in which Lauer allegedly forced her to have anal sex. When she pushed back on having sex with Lauer again, the “Today” host allegedly told her, “You said you liked having sex in Sochi.” Nevils eventually gave in and had sex with Lauer that night, but wrote that “there would have been four more similar encounters over the next few months.”
“Matt called me backstage once and I went, but the other two times I ended up there midway through my day job,” she wrote. “In one encounter, I told myself I wasn’t the naive fool I was in Sochi, and I told myself I wasn’t the girl Matt would kneel in his office. I always thought this was the time for me to take back control. But I never did. I just dragged myself into my own abuse.”
“If an alleged victim was indeed sexually assaulted, why would she continue a relationship with her abuser? Why would she go back? This is a question I’ve been asked countless times, including by Matt himself,” Nevils wrote, noting that Lauer said in an open letter in 2019 that “Brooke’s story is full of contradictions.”
“If I was walking home at night and a guy in a ski mask jumped out and sexually assaulted me in an alley, I certainly wouldn’t follow him down the street and ask if I wanted to go get coffee,” Nevils wrote. “The assailant is a stranger, so neither his opinion of me nor his relationship with me matters. He can’t take my job or damage my reputation. No one in my life blames me for getting him into trouble. But suppose this actually happens within an existing relationship, like most sexual assaults. I have to consider not just whether someone will believe me, but how the allegation will affect other people in my life. If that means I lose my job, my church, my school, or even my family, I have reason to convince myself that it wasn’t sexual assault in the first place.”
Nevils described how Lauer was “perfectly kind” at work during this period, adding: “Aside from when we were alone, he was not monstrous at all, he was charming and charismatic, like he was the only person in the world.” “He was a powerful example of the talent that all good interviewers have, which is to make people feel like they’re trying to make people feel,” she recalled, which was another reason why his alleged behavior confused her and made it difficult for her to speak up.
Nevils filed a complaint with NBC in November 2017, accusing Lauer of sexual misconduct. He was fired within 24 hours. After Mr. Lauer lost his job, Variety published an article in Today detailing other allegations of wrongdoing by Mr. Lauer. Lauer initially responded to Nevills’ rape accusations in an open letter, denying any wrongdoing but admitting to having had an affair with Nevills.
Variety has requested comment from Lauer’s representatives regarding Nevilles’ new book.
Visit The Cut’s website to read the full excerpt from Nevil’s book. “The Unspeakable” will be published on February 3rd.
