She used to find great meaning in the sound of the Today show theme. For Brooke Nevils, it was more than just background noise on drowsy school mornings in St. Louis; it was a gateway to something greater, a sign that the news was important and that individuals like Ann Curry, Matt Lauer, and Katie Couric were in some way steady guides through the chaos of everyday life.
After studying journalism, getting a job at NBC felt like stepping into that dream. Nevils advanced swiftly from page to producer, demonstrating her worth in a newsroom where proximity and skill frequently blended together. However, the power dynamics that existed behind the glass walls of 30 Rockefeller Plaza distorted reality in addition to shaping careers.
| Name | Brooke Nevils |
|---|---|
| Profession | Former NBC producer, author |
| Known For | Accusing Matt Lauer of sexual assault |
| Memoir | Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe |
| Personal Life | Married with two children |
| Source | NPR Interview, Jan 2026 |
Nevils went to a bar with her boss, Meredith Vieira, and other NBC employees during the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Lauer joined them. Shots were ordered. That night would fracture the version of her life she’d built since childhood. As she later alleged, Lauer invited her to his hotel room and sexually assaulted her. The pain, she recalls, was physical and psychological. Walking was painful. It hurt to sit. It was painful to recall.
Back in New York, the interactions didn’t stop. More interactions took place. She talked about going back to Lauer’s office, getting dragged into his dressing room, and even visiting his apartment, where he put towels on the bed “because of what happened last time.” He allegedly described the act as “transgressive,” dehumanizing it and redefining it as kink. But Nevils wasn’t in control—she was trapped in a loop of professional obligation and personal erasure.
These moments, meticulously recounted in her memoir Unspeakable Things, are not framed as a clean narrative arc of victim and villain. Nevils is painfully clear about her own confusion, her inner rationalizations, and the years it took to name what happened. She tried for years to find an explanation for the blood on the hotel sheets, but the image stuck in her head as a cruel, silent witness.
The fallout, when it came, was swift and public. Nevils eventually brought Lauer to the attention of NBC’s HR in 2017, at the height of the #MeToo movement. Within a day, he lost his job. Then came the press. Then came the isolation.
In a matter of days, newsrooms were whispering her name. She was referred to as a mistress by some. Others accused her of bringing down a national icon. She went into a spiral. She started drinking more. Eventually, she checked herself into a psych ward, believing she had ruined not just her own life—but the lives of those around her.
One line in her account, “If anyone else had done this to me, I would have gone to the police,” took me by surprise. That idea’s ruthless logic demonstrates how even our most fundamental instincts for justice and safety can be distorted by power.
Unspeakable Things excels at rejecting simplification. Nevils acknowledges that she made appearances with Lauer and occasionally made the first move. She admits to lying, to pushing down guilt, to reshaping herself physically and emotionally in a desperate bid to reclaim control.
But she also insists on clarity: none of that made her responsible for what happened.
Prior to the memoir’s publication, former coworker Ann Curry publicly backed her, describing Nevils as “brave” and “credible.” It’s a word that’s been weaponized and weighted over the past decade—credible—as if survivors of assault must pass some threshold of palatability to be believed. However, in this situation, credibility ought to be the standard rather than a reward.
The memoir is written with the incisive clarity of someone who has faced the difficult task of self-reflection. It demonstrates how organizations foster loyalty despite their inability to provide protection. How silence isn’t always chosen—it’s conditioned. And how healing is incredibly messy rather than linear.
Nevils, now a mother of two, worries how her story will affect her children. She writes that she is preparing them for life’s challenges in a particularly poignant passage, saying, “to be honest with them and say I wasn’t perfect — but I still didn’t deserve what happened to me.” Such candor does not make suffering go away. However, it opens a door.
She left NBC not with a grand sendoff, but quietly—after a leave of absence that, as she puts it, “ultimately proved permanent.” Almost ten years of service were lost. And yet, in walking away, she reclaimed something else: her voice.
The consequences of its own silence are still being felt by the media sector. Although Brooke Nevils’ story doesn’t provide a flawless conclusion, it does add something very important: an unwavering first-person narrative.
Nevils provides a map, albeit a scarred one, for others traversing similar terrain by disclosing the personal and frequently unsightly details of what transpired after she made the decision to speak out. She doesn’t ask for sympathy. She wants to be acknowledged.
It serves as a reminder that tales like hers—complex, paradoxical, and profoundly human—deserve to be believed as well as heard.
