Piers Morgan isn’t holding back!
The 56-year-old former Good Morning Britain host is taking aim at Katie Couric after shocking excerpts from her upcoming memoir Going There made headlines.
“If there's a special place in hell for women who don't help other women, mean-girl Katie Couric is going to have a ringside seat after her women-trashing book reveals her lectures about female equality and bullying to be the rankest hypocrisy,” Piers said in a scathing exposé for Daily Mail.
In the explosive tell-all, Couric takes aim at several high-profile women, including Diane Sawyer, Ashleigh Banfield, Martha Stewart and the late comedian Joan Rivers.
The 64-year-old journalist admitted she was reluctant to mentor colleague Banfield, who at the time was a rising MSNBC talent. “For a minute there, Ashleigh Banfield was the next big thing,” Couric wrote. “I’d heard her father was telling anyone who’d listen that she was going to replace me. In that environment mentorship sometimes feels like self sabotage.”
Banfield reacted to the comment, saying she was “deeply” hurt by Couric’s words and idolized her as a budding journalist.
Couric also noted how she and former Good Morning America rival Sawyer were extremely competitive towards one another and would often use “cut-throat” methods to secure the top interviews.
As the rival between the two TV heavyweights began to boil over, Couric recalled the 20/20 alum complaining, “That woman must be stopped.” Though Couric says she “loved getting under Diane’s skin,” she revealed the journalism vet — whose interviews she confessed she “scrutinized” — got under hers, too.
The former Today host didn’t hold back on dishing on her disdain for DIY Queen Stewart. During an awards ceremony in 1996 Couric made a joke about Stewart, saying “anything I can do you [Stewart] can do better,” she said, which wasn’t well received by the 80-year-old talk show host.
Couric wrote in her book that it took “some healthy humbling (prison will do that…)” for Stewart to “develop a sense of humor.”
The mother-of-three also recalled a moment she angered comedy legend Rivers while she was a guest on her short-lived chat fest Katie — the series was cancelled after two seasons.
The former Yahoo Global News anchor asked the comedian — who tragically died in 2014 — if she had plastic surgery. The question seemingly annoyed Rivers to the extent the two never spoke again.
Once backstage, Couric detailed Rivers throwing a fit, saying: “Who does she think she is? She's on her knees blowing 14-year-olds,” referring to Brooks Perlin, her then-much-younger boyfriend. The former flames split in 2011 after five years of dating.
