In 2009, Nell Scovell, who was only the second female writer ever hired forLate Night with David Letterman, wrote a scathingVanity Fairessayabout Letterman, in which she said the show was a “hostile work environment” for women when she worked there.
Scovell, 58, quit the show after less than a year. She went on to work on other television series and createdSabrina the Teenage Witch.
On Wednesday, Scovell published afollow-up pieceand revealed that she recently had a meeting with Letterman, 72, in which he apologized for his past actions.
“When I read that document you wrote 10 years ago,” Letterman said, according to Scovell, “I just thought, There’s nothing to be upset about here. It happened, that’s all true.”
Brent N. Clarke/FilmMagic; Noam Galai/Getty
“I’m sorry I was that way and I was happy to have read the piece because it wasn’t angering,” he reportedly said. “I felt horrible because who wants to be the guy that makes people unhappy to work where they’re working? I don’t want to be that guy. I’m not that guy now. I was that guy then.”
She said Letterman also addressed his infamous on-air statement in 2009 in which headmitted to an affairwith his assistant and sexual relationships with several other femaleLate Showstaffers. The admission came after a CBS News producer allegedly attempted to blackmail him over the affairs.
“It’s not a happy memory,” he said, according to Scovell. “But it’s a memory that changed my life.”
John Paul Filo/CBS via Getty
He also apparently apologized for the lack of female writers on the show: “I don’t know how it got sidetracked. It just did. It was sloppiness. Inertia. I see it differently now and if I were to start a show today, holy God, I’m certain there’d be mistakes, but not the mistakes that were just so gosh-dang obvious.”
Letterman’s first talk show,Late Night with DavidLetterman, ran from 1982 to 1993 on NBC before transitioning to CBS asThe Late Show with David Letterman.
His decades-long tenure as host ended on May 20, 2015. He currently hosts a Netflix seriesMy Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman.
source: people.com
