Katie Couric on What ‘Going There’ Means to Her Daughters, Her Relationship with Matt Lauer, and More

“Extra’s” Billy Bush spoke with Katie Couric about her headline-making new memoir “Going There.”

The book is highly anticipated and every revelation has sparked news headlines, from her relationship with Matt Lauer to losing her husband Jay Monahan.

Billy asked about the reaction she’s had so far, and Katie shared, “The reaction I’m getting from everyone who has read the book is incredibly positive and exciting. I think initially, for people who hadn’t read the book, I think they were led to believe this book was something it is not, because it was sensationalized and cherry-picked and strung together in a way that really didn’t resemble what I wrote in its totality.”

She hopes those that do read it come away thinking, “It was really interesting, it was authentic, it made me think.”

Couric opened up about why she decided to pen the memoir, explaining, “I wrote the book because I had this big, wild, unexpected life where I’ve been so privileged to do the things I’ve done, to meet the people I’ve met, to cover the stories I’ve covered, and I’ve had a lot of challenges, losing my husband Jay to colon cancer at 42, and we had two little girls, and then [losing] my sister a couple years later.”

Bush asked how her daughters Ellie and Caroline reacted to the book, and Couric said, “I have two amazing daughters and they both read it and they both called me and they were both in tears. They were 6 and 2 when Jay died, so they could never fully conceive, nor should they have, what that time in our lives was like. I wrote about him as a living, breathing person who was so magnificent and so smart and so funny and loved them so much. So he came alive for them in these pages, and I think they feel very, very grateful for that.”

Jay died in 1998, and Katie married John Molner in 2014. Billy wondered if they would have been friends. “I do think they would have liked each other,” Katie said. “John often says that, ‘I wish I had met Jay.’”

Couric also writes about her former “Today” co-host Lauer in the book, who was fired in 2017 over sexual misconduct allegations.

Katie told Billy, “I hope readers understand the process I went through to square the Matt I knew with the Matt who emerged in the midst of these allegations, and it was hard and it is still hard. It made it very, very difficult to come to his aid and support him as I learned more about the situation.”

Now, she’s heading out on a major national book tour. What can fans expect? She revealed, “I’m going to nine cities. I‘m really excited because I’m going to talk a little bit about my book and my journey and then I’m interviewing people I really admire like Tan France in Boston. I’m interviewing Chloe Fineman and Melissa Villaseñor, two superstars from ‘Saturday Night Live,’ Kara Swisher, and Nikole Hannah-Jones, who started The 1619 Project for The New York Times, Jen Garner in L.A., Leslie Jordan in San Francisco, Savannah Guthrie in Philadelphia, Chance the Rapper in Chicago.”

She described each stop as “a night where people can come together, hopefully be inspired by some of the people they meet, and leave feeling energized and more connected after a very, very difficult period in our history.”