TV news host Katie Couric sensed her position at NBC’s top-rated morning show, Today, was shaky even at the peak of her celebrity, according to reports about her forthcoming memoir.
In Going There, to be published by Little, Brown next month, Couric recalls worrying that her role as co-host on the program might be usurped by up-and-comer Ashleigh Banfield in the early 2000s, according to a report in the Daily Mail. “For a minute there, Ashleigh Banfield was the next big thing; I’d heard her father was telling anyone who’d listen that she was going to replace me,” Couric writes in the book, according to the report. “In that environment, mentorship sometimes felt like self-sabotage.”
Couric recalls feeling similarly competitive with her predecessor, Deborah Norville, according to the report. Couric, who left TV anchoring duties in 2017 after stints on Today, the CBS Evening News, 60 Minutes, and ABC News, writes that Norville had a “major relatability problem” and that a colleague told her that “with Deborah, people feel like they need to get dressed before they turn on the TV.”
The book will also reportedly feature stories from some of her more contentious celebrity interviews. (Joan Rivers reportedly snapped “'Who does she think she is?” after Couric asked if she’d had plastic surgery.) The book is also said to include details about her marriage to Jay Monahan, who died in 1998. Couric is the author of one previous book, 2011’s The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons From Extraordinary Lives.
Going There is slated for publication on Oct. 26.
Mark Athitakis is a journalist in Phoenix who writes about books for the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere.
