Curious to know more about those details, which Vieira has handled with both strength and grace?
This is the tragedy surrounding Meredith Vieira.
“To this day…
I remember all of it,” she revealed onToday.
“And to this day, it sticks in my head.”
After that, Vieira was mortified and desperate to get skinner, no matter what the cost might be.
“I went on this ridiculous diet,” she continued.
“All I did was drink Tab and eat like five Ritz crackers a day for the entire summer.
[I was] maybe 10 when I did that for like a month and a half.”
And her appearance is something she continues to struggle with, especially because she’s on television.
“I just saw her increasingly in pain.”
Vieira’s grandmother ultimately passed away in 1977.
That early tragedy obviously had an impact on Vieira, and she faces any fears she may have head-on.
She regularly gets mammograms, and she has even helped theFind Your MBC Voiceinitiative.
“you could’t put cancer on hold.”
But for a long time, she stayed with him, for a variety of reasons.
“I was scared of him,” she explained on an episode ofThe Meredith Vieira Show.
“I was scared if I tried to leave something worse could happen to me.”
She hid in a stairwell until he retrieved her, sobbing.
But even then, she didn’t leave.
Thank you for sharing your story, Meredith.
But given Hewitt’s status, Vieira really didn’t have a choice.
“I mean, he was the king,” she told theLos Angeles Times.
“And so he could probably do no wrong.”
Well clearly, it has, as more and more older women are working in top TV spots.
Naturally, Vieira is 100 percent here for it.
“If you’re experienced and you’re good at what you do, why not?”
“The men have been doing it forever.”
“She didn’t blink.”
“You just sort of learn to accept that.”
But that doesn’t mean that things are dire for Cohen and Vieira.
“You don’t have to be controlled by it,” Cohen added.
That couldn’t have been easy for Vieira and her husband, Richard Cohen, to deal with.
It was only after calling her doctor that Vieira realized her hilarious mistake.
And if she’d kept doing what she was doing?
The first was in 1999, when he was diagnosed, treated, and sent into remission.
But the disease reared its ugly head once again, sending Cohen into a deep depression.
“He went into himself like I’ve never seen,” Vieira confessed in an interview withABC News.
“I think he was a much angrier man.
That second surgery carried with it a lot of stuff afterwards, the recovery period.”
“It’s what gets you through.”
“The show was evolving.
It didn’t feel the same way,” she recalled.
“The vibe was getting weird.
I felt like it was becoming a little bit more about acting than connecting.”
Vieira eventually leftThe Viewin 2006, tellingTimethat the program had become hard to watch (viaTMZ).
“It sort of became a joke.”
“I kept thinking to myself, ‘You’re a journalist.
verify you get this right.'”
“And right now she needed a mom to hold her.”
So, of course, she embraced the student, holding onto her tight.
It’s an experience Vieira will never forget.
“I am forever grateful to have given a voice to the students there,” she added.
“And to have provided some comfort for at least one.”
“Sleep deprivation is a bad thing,” she continued.
“When you’re tired all the time, you just don’t feel well.”
We’re exhausted just reading about it!
Thus it was time for her to seek out greener pastures and more sleep.
Naturally, Meredith Vieira was devastated to learn of the accusations against Lauer.
“[It was] was like a gut punch,” she lamented in an interview withPeople.
“I was [in L.A.] and my phone started going off at 4 a.m.
I didn’t know what to make of all of it.”
Ever sympathetic, Vieira feels that what happened was complicated.
“The whole thing is just sad,” she continued.
“And it’s been rough in a lot of places with a lot of people.”
“Well the obvious that everyone will miss is he was the constant entertainer,” she revealed toPeople.
“He was so good at conversation, so good at listening and such a great listener.”
Philbin understood that, and he offered his services.
“That’s who he was and I will miss that a lot,” Vieira added.
However, like all of us, even Vieira has struggled with her confidence over the years.
“It doesn’t matter where you are in your career,” she toldNBC News.
“Everyone, especially women, has imposter syndrome.”
And she ought to know, judging by experience.
Unfortunately, one of Vieira’s children tested positive for the virus, which was understandably unnerving.
But it sounds like things ended up just fine in the end.
