Former Today anchor Ann Curry claimed she was fired over wanting to wear flat shoes and her gray hair, and producers compared her multi-colored style to Toucan Sam.
Ann Curry has suggested that she was fired by NBC because she has gray hair, wore clothes that were too frumpy and hated wearing high heels.
The former Today anchor - who was sacked after just a year in the job - claimed that she was mocked by a colleague for looking like Froot Loops mascot Toucan Sam one day when she wore a multicoloured dress.
Whenever she tried to wear clogs and flats it didn’t ‘go over very well with my bosses’, she said in an interview.
Instead she was asked to wear ‘ridiculously high heels’ because female viewers would coo over her footwear, even though she didn’t like them.
Curry also suggested that her refusal to dye her hair may have played a part as it is ‘not tolerated’ on a female TV presenter.
Her move to Today has burned her so badly that she may even now quit television entirely to become a teacher.
Curry, 55, was replaced by Savannah Guthrie, 40, last month as co-anchor on Today as it struggles to cope with the ratings war against arch rival Good Morning America on ABC.
The interview in Ladies Home Journal was carried out before she was sacked and includes the unfortunate headline: ‘The Natural: Ann Curry gets real...about her future at Today’.
It makes clear how hard the former foreign correspondent who championed serious reporting in war zones found the transition to morning TV.
In the piece she says: ‘One day I wore a multicoloured dress and someone asked if I was trying to be Toucan Sam. But I chose it because I thought, this will perk up America. I’m encouraged by my bosses to wear these ridiculously high heel shoes because women say: ‘I love your shoes!’ So if it makes women happy, I’ll wear them. But I’m still going to be me’.
'Elsewhere she also admits: ‘I’ve tried to wear clogs and flats and it hasn’t gone over very well with my bosses’.
In words which go against the grain of female presenters, Curry explained that she wants to embrace hold age and accepts her wrinkles as they ‘connect me to my family’.
Curry said: ‘I’ve got cellulite because it runs in my family. I’ve got gray hair because I won’t dye it. I want to be about to honour my family by looking exactly as they did as they got older. Of course I want to look my best. I eat right, exercise and use skin cream. I try to wear nice clothes. But I don’t want to change the fundamental parts of me because it means changing who I am.'
Curry said that that in the past women who work on TV ‘haven’t been allowed’ to go gray, but that she was going to do so anyway. She said: ‘I think showing some gray is authentic...true beauty is a face you have lived in’.
Curry has finally gone to London to help cover the Olympics as was reportedly promised to her when she was removed from the Today couch.
Before she was sacked however there were reports that she had angered executives and infuriated Today anchor Matt Lauer, with whom she struggled to develop an on-air chemistry.
Responding to the criticism, Curry said: ‘It's hard not to take it personally. You worry, Am I not good enough? Am I not what people need? Am I asking the right questions?
‘When people say negative things or speculate, you can't help but feel hurt. I know NBC pays my salary but I have never doubted who I work for. I think about the people who watch. They're the ones who matter to me. I want to feel I haven't dropped the ball when it comes to them.’
In a searingly brutal section, Curry opened up about the self-doubt the she still feels despite being a successful career woman. She said that she doesn’t ‘understand my worth’ and that it is a ‘chronic condition for women’.
Curry said: ‘I'm not talking about professionally. I'm talking about in our personal lives. We constantly punish ourselves with degrading thoughts when we look at ourselves in the mirror. We allow people to treat us poorly, we allow our husbands or boyfriends to get away with things or we have relationships with girlfriends or colleagues who don't treat us well.'
‘We don't defend ourselves as we would our own children. Women have demanded and gotten better jobs and more power. But the one thing we deserve is a better relationship with ourselves. We waste too much time beating ourselves up. I think at my age of 55, it's time to stop doing that.’
Curry will now reportedly make a return to foreign reporting and keep her $10m a year contract with NBC, which has two years left on it.
But asked where she sees her future, Curry said: ‘I've been at Today for 15 years and I'd love to make it to 20. I think eventually I want to become a teacher, like my father wanted to be, and hopefully positively influence the next generation.’
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