Ron Meyer Talks About His NBCUniversal Exit, Will Smith Oscars Slap In Candid Podcast Interview
Ex-NBCUniversal Vice Chairman Ron Meyer opened up about his clouded departure from his former job in a wide-ranging podcast earlier this month, admitting to bad judgment while saying he didn’t begrudge his firing.
A relaxed Meyer appeared in the OnTheRags podcast, a discussion with former ICM agent Risa Shapiro, Amy Motta, Gloria Butler, and Sloan Kivo. Meyer was not hesitant to talk about anything, including his long-rumored tattoos.and how life has changed since his departure from NBCUniversal, one of the top jobs in Hollywood.
Meyer was dismissed as NBCUniversal vice chairman in August 2020 after he disclosed that he made hush-money payments to a woman to cover up an old affair. A founder of CAA before helming NBCU, Meyer was one of Hollywood’s titans, making his fall from grace all the steeper.
Still, he’s maintained his perspective on things.
“I just got back from Cannes,” Meyer said. “I said to everybody, ‘In my old life, when I would go to Cannes, everybody would lift me and carry me all over the place. This last trip, I’m the lifter. I’m carrying everybody.’ So that was the difference in having the job and not having it.”
Meyer dove into the what-how of his scandal, calling it a “two-night dalliance,” adding, “In my life of bad judgments, that was one of my bad judgments.”
He said he settled with his lover because “I didn’t want to hurt my ex-wife. I didn’t want my kids to find out that i had done this, and the whole thing was embarrassing and seedy. So I made a settlement with her, and in that settlement, she had a boyfriend who called me always for advice, and I tried to be helpful to him…all of a sudden, I got a letter from him and his lawyer trying to sue me for not giving him good advice, or whatever you want to call it.”
Meyer said that “Universal decided to fire me because I did not tell them that I had settled a potential lawsuit that named them. I hope I’m saying this right, but that’s exactly what happened, and it wasn’t a Me-Too situation. It wasn’t anything other than that.”
The FBI investigated it, he said. “I mean it’s a…you know, I was extorted, in my opinion. I obviously paid these guys, by the way,” saying that they asked for “hundreds of millions of dollars.”
“It was an extraordinary situation. By the way, i’m not the only one they’ve done this to, right? But, you know, look — people in today’s litigious society, obviously everything came out, and today’s people can sue for anything they want to, yeah, and you’re forced to have to defend it, by the way, in every courtroom in the world. Everywhere someone’s lying and someone’s telling the truth, everybody’s swearing on a stack of Bibles.”
Meyer said he didn’t begrudge his firing.
“Truth is, you know, when you work for someone…people do what they want. They just have to honor their contract. They don’t have to like the way I dress or the way I look, at the way I sound, the way I act. They can fire me at will. They have that right to do it, and so I don’t begrudge that. I always knew that one day, the job would end. I didn’t like the way it ended. I thought it was undignified. I’d hoped that I would leave in a more memorable way, or less memorable way, I guess. So that was that.
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“It was embarrassing and embarrassing because I was exposed without any notice to telling my kids and my ex-wife, and I felt bad that I hurt people that I loved. I was losing my job, yes. I always knew that this job wasn’t mine to keep forever. I had lasted longer than anybody ever expected.”
Meyer is working on his own projects and has discovered the joys of working from home.
“It’s great. I mean, I’m rarely out of sweatpants or shorts, and I’m not having a bad time at all. I’m not sure I could go back to a square head job again. I couldn’t go back to a square head job again.”
Meyer may no longer be at the top of Hollywood’s food chain, but he shared his opinion on the topic that’s dominated the last quarter — the infamous Oscars slap by Will Smith on Chris Rock.
“It’s a real tough one,” Meyer said. “I’ve known Will for many, many years. I know Chris Rock for many years. I admire and like them both a lot. I mean, it was so out of character for Will, you know? From my perspective, it was a punk ass thing to do. You know, if Mike Tyson was on stage, he wouldn’t have done it.”
Meyer predicted a bounce-back for Smith, adding he deserved his Best Actor Oscar.
“He didn’t deserve a standing ovation. But I think that was a weird spontaneous act, and he deserves to be in the doghouse for a while. He didn’t deserve to get away with it.”
He concluded, “He didn’t do anything that should end his career. He’s not Harvey Weinstein. He’s not. He just did a punk-ass chicken [ __ ] thing.”
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