Katie Couric is tweeting madly to promote her new talk ABC talk show. (
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“I need a martini,” Katie Couric says, laughing. “You reporters have worn me out.”
It’s 1 p.m. in the Colony Room deep inside the Beverly Hilton Hotel, and Couric, 55. looks exhausted.
The former CBS News anchor is at the end of a media blitz that has taken her across the country to promote “Katie,” her new ABC talk show, which debuts Sept. 10. This is the last day of the tour, and I am her last interview.
“It’s like starting a new business,” says Couric of the launch. She looks chic in a skintight red David Meister dress that shows off her spinning-class-trimmed figure. “I am involved in every decision — and when I am not, I let them know I want to be.”
Why Couric needs to work is anyone’s guess. Asked why someone who earned a reported $75 million on her last job would need another one, Couric chuckles but doesn’t like the question. “How the hell do you know? Have you been talking to my broker?” she asks before calming down. “I like to work, and why shouldn’t I? I’m good at what I do.”
Having just survived her hardest time professionally, she can analyze what went wrong for her as a news anchor.
“Reporting the news in 22 minutes was somewhat confining for me,” Couric says. “And even after I got a chance to interact with correspondents, after 30 seconds I had to wrap it up. It was a very buttoned-up format, and the things I do well couldn’t shine.”
If “Katie” is Couric’s daytime comeback, it’s off to a good start: The show will be seen in more than 93 percent of US homes. Couric sees it as her opportunity to reconnect with the audience that showered her with affection on “Today.” Guiding her from the control room will be Jeff Zucker, her executive producer at NBC for eight years.
“Katie” will focus on news and topics that interest her, such as menopause.
“I have dry eyes,” she says, “and I just learned it’s another symptom of menopause.” She sighs.
Will she talk about that?
“Of course,” she says.
The first week’s shows are shrouded in mystery, although she will try to interview the wives and children of the presidential and vice-presidential candidates.
“I will do political reporting but not at the level of the 2008 campaign,” says Couric. “I think the Sarah Palin interview was a moment in time, and I am not sure that kind of moment will happen again for me professionally. I love [ABC News president] Ben Sherwood. It is very important to the network to have synergy — so, to be honest, that will be really useful from a booking perspective. There are a lot of outlets at ABC that will work to my advantage. I will do ‘GMA’ if they need me. I will do prime-time specials.”
One regular segment will be called YOLO, which stands for “You Only Live Once,” a bucket list. For Couric, that includes jumping out of a plane, dancing in a Broadway show and dating George Clooney.
Actually, Clooney’s too old for her.
“I’m a cougar,” Couric growls, lunging, her hands curled into paws. The effect is startling, to say the least, and makes her days of dressing up as Peter Pan on “Today” a distant memory.
Couric’s last boyfriend, hedge-funder Brooks Perlin, was 17 years younger. “It was fun and exciting and fulfilling for different reasons,” she says, “But it wasn’t like I set out to find a younger man; it just happened.” They broke up last December after she left CBS.
Her newest beau, whom she met a few months ago, also has plenty of cash but is more age-appropriate. He’s financier John Molner, 49, head of mergers and acquisitions at Brown Brothers Harriman. Recently, the National Enquirer took a pot shot at that relationship with the headline “Katie Couric Betrayed” after Molner’s former, 27-year-old girlfriend told the paper that he had cheated on her — and not on Couric, as the headline suggested.
Couric, who became a widow in 1998 when her 42-year-old husband, Jay Monahan, died, says won’t talk about any specifics of her relationships on the show.
“I won’t overshare, at least I hope not,” she says. Becoming a widow at age 41 had the greatest impact on her life. “The word widow still shocks me,” she says. “I still can’t believe 15 years later that that happened to Jay, and that it happened to my girls.”
She waited 18 months before letting friends fix her up. with mixed results. “Are you Arnie the Anesthesiologist?” she asked one blind date. “’No,” he said. ‘Arnie couldn’t make it, I’m David the Banker.’” Her first serious relationship as a newly single woman was with TV mogul Tom Werner, with whom she remains good friends.
She’ll open up about dating on the show — and about being a single mom of Ellie, 21, and Carrie, 16, who sometimes, she says, “don’t even want to be in the same ZIP code with me.”
What she won’t try to be is the next Oprah. “To compare anybody to her is an exercise in futility,” says Couric. “I don’t aspire to be anywhere near the icon Oprah has proved herself to be.”
“Katie” will face tough competition, as the daytime shift from soaps to talk shows becomes even more pervasive. Who will be the next star: returning veteran Rikki Lake, Jeff Probst, “Family Feud’s” Steve Harvey or Couric?
There is early buzz that the show could be a massive hit, but one news executive from a rival network says the odds are against Couric. “Newspeople never do very well in daytime,” he says. “Look at Jane Pauley. And now Anderson Cooper has just had to revamp his whole show.”
And Couric got some good advice from an unlikely source.
“I was sitting in the kitchen tearing up because someone had said something horrible about me,” she says. “And my daughter Carrie said, ‘Mom, remember what Samantha said on ‘Sex In The City”’?
“And I am thinking, ‘Oh, there is so much wrong with this conversation … What, Carrie?
“Samantha said, ‘If I listen to what every bitch in New York said about me, I would never leave the house.’ ”
You wouldn’t think of Couric taking career advice from Samantha, but that’s exactly what she is doing. “Because those nattering nabobs of negativity, as Spiro Agnew called them, can really hurt,” says Couric.
With that, she heads out the door for that martini.
Then she stops halfway down the hall, whirls, and throws her arms in the air with wild abandon.
That’s the Katie Couric coming to daytime TV.
KATIE
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