Report: Matt Lauer Could Quit the Hamptons
The disgraced NBC host was allegedly overheard discussing plans to get away from the Hamptons for the summer.
Justin Sullivan
Could Matt Lauer be preparing to get out of the Hamptons now that the busy summer holiday season is here?
Page Six speculates Friday that privacy-seeking Lauer—who has been in the Hamptons laying low since he was fired by NBC—might be heading for a more remote spot for the summer, after he was overheard chatting to one of his old friends from the Today show, senior producer Deborah Kosofsky, at a Manhattan restaurant.
“They were in the middle of the room,” Page Six quotes a source as saying. “They were talking about vacation spots.” The source said they overheard talk of a move “to the mountains.”
However another source told Page Six the report was inaccurate.
Lauer has two valuable properties in the Hamptons that he owns with his estranged wife, the former model Annette Roque. Lauer and Roque own a $10m Sag Harbor hideaway and a 40-acre horse farm in Water Mill. They also own a North Haven estate that once belonged to Richard Gere.
Lauer sold off his Upper East Side apartment in April for $7 million. He used the apartment when he was working at NBC.
If Lauer does want somewhere more remote to gather his thoughts, he could always head to the other side of the world: New Zealand. He is to be allowed to keep a 26,000-acre lakeside property he owns there after authorities concluded he hadn’t breached a “good character” condition imposed on foreign buyers.
Lauer was fired from NBC after accusations of sexually inappropriate behavior. He made his first statement on the scandal in April, saying: “I have made no public comments on the many false stories from anonymous or biased sources that have been reported about me over these past several months. I remained silent in an attempt to protect my family from further embarrassment and to restore a small degree of the privacy they have lost.
“But defending my family now requires me to speak up. I fully acknowledge that I acted inappropriately as a husband, father, and principal at NBC. However I want to make it perfectly clear that any allegations or reports of coercive, aggressive, or abusive actions on my part, at any time, are absolutely false.”