Lisa Wilkinson has shared the angry email she sent before she was fired from Channel Nine’s Today show in her new autobiography It Wasn’t Meant to Be Like This.
During her final day on the breakfast show, Lisa said she was ‘quietly fuming’ because ‘almost every interview was done by her co-host Karl Stefanovic alone.’
After the show ended, she rushed to former Today show boss Mark Calvert’s office to discuss whether it had been a ‘mistake’ – however he appeared to have left to avoid her.
Revealed: Read the SCATHING email Lisa Wilkinson sent t bosses before she was fired from the the Today show amid escalating feud with co-host Karl Stefanovic
She said she waited for him for several hours before she had to leave and head to a doctor’s appointment where she wrote the heated email.
‘I don’t know what compelled me but as I sat in the doctor’s waiting room, I sent an email to [her manager] Nick Fordham and [her husband] Pete FitzSimons,’ she wrote.
Lisa’s furious email read: ‘Guys, I’m going to take a note of how the allocation of hosting roles go down between Karl and me in the coming weeks.’
‘Never know when I may need it as a record… This morning I didn’t have a single solo interview, and even the ones Karl and I would normally do together had been given to Karl alone. All I had was the ‘girls chat’ segment at 8.40. What is this the 1960s?’
Final days: During her final day on the Today show, Lisa said she was ‘quietly fuming’ because ‘almost every interview that day was done by her co-host Karl Stefanovic (left) alone’
Email: She then sent an email to her manager Nick Fordham, asking: ‘This morning I didn’t have a single solo interview, and even the ones Karl and I would normally do together had been given to Karl alone. All I had was the ‘girls chat’ segment at 8.40. What is this the 1960s?’
Later on that day, Lisa said she was shopping at her local Woolworths Supermarket when she received a phone call from her manager Nick, who had finished a meeting with Nine’s CEO Hugh Marks.
He told her that she was ‘permanently off’ the Today show, and would never return.
‘While this news of my dismissal was still probably hours from going public, the humiliation I felt at that moment was overwhelming,’ Lisa said.
After her exit, Marks publicly revealed that Wilkinson had asked for $2.3million, which would’ve pushed her well above Stefanovic’s salary of $2million.
But Wikinson has now publicly refuted that in a new interview with ABC’s Radio National on Wednesday.
‘I didn’t ask for salary parity, ever. I asked for a fairer share of the spoils that were coming to a show that Karl and I had taken to number one,’ she explained.
‘I found out the salary Karl was on from two separate sources … and the gender pay gap was off the charts.
‘The $2.3 million is a complete lie and has been constantly repeated – it is a complete lie, and I have all the emails to prove it.’
She also said that the narrative about the salary was made public in a bid to make her look bad.
‘That whole narrative was put out there to make me look greedy and like I’d risen above my station, but it was a narrative that I decided at the time not to get involved in,’ she explained.
‘Discussions like that are pretty unseemly, they’re pretty awful, and I’m the very first person to admit that when you do breakfast TV, you are paid a ridiculous salary.
‘But what was even more ridiculous was the size of the gender pay gap I had been experiencing for many, many years,’ she finished.
Shock: Later on that day, Lisa said she was shopping at her local Woolworths Supermarket when she received a phone call from her manager Nick, who had finished a meeting with Nine’s CEO Hugh Marks. He told that she was ‘permanently off’ the Today show, and would never return
In the tell-all book, Lisa also claimed her co-host Karl had been giving her the cold shoulder in the weeks prior to her stepping down.
The Project host explained that she and her husband Peter had invited Karl and his partner Jasmine Yarbrough to attend their 25 wedding anniversary vow renewal ceremony in October 2017.
Two days before the event, however, Karl and Jasmine contacted Lisa’s husband Peter to say they wouldn’t be attending the celebrations, as they’d extended their holidays abroad.
‘In the ten days since [the ceremony] Karl hadn’t contacted me, his co-host of almost eleven years, at all. No phone message, no text, no apology, not even a simple congrats. Just complete silence,’ Lisa alleged.
After returning to work, Lisa claimed Karl didn’t ask her about her holidays, nor did apologise for being a ‘no-show at the wedding’ in the two hours before he mentioned it on-air.
Karl then opened the show by welcoming Lisa back from her honeymoon after she and husband Peter celebrated their 25th anniversary.
‘We’ve got P!nk on today, just for Lisa and her honeymoon return, Lisa, good morning to you,’ Karl said as he opened the show, before asking Lisa about her trip.
She then responded: ‘I did [have a wonderful time], Karl, but why would anyone care about that when it is news time. Sylvia, good morning.’
Lisa left Channel Nine’s Today show back in October 2017 after a reported gender pay gap dispute.
The Nine Network were ‘unable to meet her expectations’ after she demanded equal pay with co-host Karl.
In January the following year, Lisa joined rival network Ten’s The Project for a rumoured multi-million dollar pay packet.
Dispute: Lisa left Channel Nine’s Today show back in October 2017