(Variety) Back in 2008, Don Lemon was co-anchoring CNN’s “Live From” weekday show with Kyra Phillips, a gig that he landed after he arrived at the network two years prior from local news in Chicago.
For months, tensions between the pair kept mounting. On more than one occasion, a “Live From” producer and a newsroom supervisor had to pull Lemon off the air during a commercial break because of the anchor’s provocative antics, not unlike his recent declaration that the 51-year-old Nikki Haley isn’t a viable presidential candidate because she “isn’t in her prime.” Amid the charged atmosphere, sources say Lemon disrespected colleague Nancy Grace on the air and Soledad O’Brien during an editorial meeting attended by roughly 30 staffers.
But his antipathy toward Phillips was particularly concerning and had many members of the close-knit Atlanta news team on edge.
While Phillips was on assignment in Iraq — a high-profile gig that Lemon coveted — he vented his disappointment at being passed over by tearing up pictures and notes on top of and inside Phillips’ desk in the news pod they shared, according to two sources who worked there at the time. When she returned from Iraq, things only got weirder.
One night while dining with members of the news team, she received the first of two threatening text messages from an unknown number on her flip phone that warned, “Now you’ve crossed the line, and you’re going to pay for it.” Phillips was visibly rattled and quickly enlisted CNN’s higher ups to identify the sender.
Remarkably, the texts were traced back to Lemon, according to those same sources.
A human resources investigation was launched, and while the findings were never disclosed to the growing pool of staffers who were aware of the situation, Lemon was abruptly pulled from his co-anchor duties with Phillips and moved to the weekends. It was a demotion by any objective measure and understood to be some kind of disciplinary action. It appears to be the last time he was paired with a female anchor until his most recent assignment on “CNN This Morning With Don Lemon, Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins.”
Phillips, who joined ABC as a Washington-based correspondent in 2018, declined comment. A spokesperson for CNN said, “Don says the alleged incident never occurred and that he was never notified of any investigation. CNN cannot corroborate the alleged events from 15 years ago.”
In the wake of Lemon’s Feb. 16 Haley comments — derided as “unacceptable” and “sexist” by everyone from CNN chair Chris Licht to Haley herself, and even referenced by Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh during her best actress acceptance speech — his fate at CNN hung in the balance, with many colleagues privately calling for his ouster.
Despite the outcry, he landed back on his feet after riding the bench for two days, posting a Twitter mea culpa in which he insisted that he is “committed to doing better” and ignoring the matter altogether during his Feb. 22 on-air return. Still, the incident has spotlighted Lemon’s troubling treatment of women and unprofessional antics, dating back nearly two decades.
Variety spoke with more than a dozen former and current colleagues who painted a picture of a journalist who flouted rules and cozied up to power all while displaying open hostility to many female co-workers. Each and every time, he appeared to charm his way out of facing any meaningful consequences.
Those who worked with him say he was a shameless name dropper and left behind hints that he socialized with important people, like a hand-written note from Stedman Graham that he had taped on his computer. Some were unnerved by his talk of his previous lawsuits, believing it signaled that he was litigious.
He frequently let drop that he successfully sued Tower Records as well as the Chicago PD for racial profiling and didn’t need to worry about money thanks to the settlements. (Variety can only find record of the former, which was settled in 2001 and appears to be sealed. Through a CNN spokesperson, Lemon says he never sued the Chicago PD). All the while, he began openly dating a fresh-out-of-college staffer despite a major age difference and power imbalance. (Lemon was 41, while the staffer was 22.) The ambitious anchor, who is gay, was not out of the closet at the time, but wasn’t hiding it either. The pair would drive to work together in Lemon’s car and began a long-term open relationship. Dating a junior employee was frowned upon at the time.
“As fast as you could make a rule, Don would bend it,” says one senior executive at the time.
More troubling was his misogynistic behavior, multiple sources say. Lemon called one of his producers fat to her face. Not long before he was identified as sending threatening texts to Phillips, he mocked Grace on air by mimicking her, shocking fellow colleagues. Grace declined comment but a person close to her tells Variety that “she thinks he’s an ass” and that he was always “rude, dismissive and really unfamiliar with the [news] content being discussed.”
“That was the beginning of when you knew that Don was kind of volatile and didn’t say good things about women,” says a witness to the Grace incident.
If Lemon felt threatened by Grace, the biggest star at CNN/Headline News at the time, she wasn’t the only one. He was upset that O’Brien landed the gig of hosting CNN’s high-profile “Black in America” docuseries, which launched in 2008. During an editorial call attended by roughly 30 staffers, he suggested O’Brien isn’t Black, according to two witnesses, who found the characterization wildly offensive. “Don always wanted to be front and center on anything high profile, especially anything involving race,” says a colleague.
O’Brien, who wasn’t present, tells Variety, “Don has long had a habit of saying idiotic and inaccurate things, so it sounds pretty on brand for him.”
The CNN spokesperson said, “Don, Soledad and others have in the past correctly referred to her Afro-Cuban heritage as it is a unique part of her personal story. But Don denies making any related remark in a derogatory way.”
When he wasn’t shocking his cohorts, he was annoying them with “diva-like behavior,” says one, like skipping editorial calls, showing up late to the newsroom or just generally exhibiting disengaged behavior. In 2009, CNN was allowed to send one journalist into the Staples Center to cover the Michael Jackson memorial. Lemon was the choice, while Anderson Cooper and O’Brien anchored outside. Sources remember Lemon complaining on social media that Cooper got more airtime.
“That led to a come-to-Jesus moment,” says another senior executive from the era. “Don was told, ‘Look, you’ve got to address your behavior. Your performance as a reporter is great. It’s your behavior that’s gotta improve. It’s what’s going to derail you if you’re not careful.’”
Instead of reining in Lemon, his superiors let things slide, perhaps because he had fostered a close friendship with then-Turner Broadcasting System chairman and CEO Phil Kent, sitting in the Turner box alongside Kent at sporting events.
After Kent hired Jeff Zucker to run the network in 2013, Lemon only became more of a provocateur.
About six months after Zucker arrived, Lemon gave his on-air take on five ways the Black community could fix its problems, including suggesting “pull up your pants.” He went on to add: “Walking around with your ass and your underwear showing is not OK. In fact, it comes from prison when they take away belts from the prisoner so that they can’t make a weapon. And then it evolved into which role a prisoner would have during male-on-male prison sex. The one with the really low pants is a submissive one. You get my point.”
Goldie Taylor, a former CNN consultant who appeared frequently as a guest on Lemon’s weekend show, said she was blacklisted at the network for critiquing Lemon’s controversial comments. “I am personally banned from a network b/c, ironically enough, I dared disagree w/ a black man publicly abt black life […] I don’t throw rocks and hide my hand. That network is @CNN and the anchor is @donlemon,” she tweeted in 2016.
