Julie Chen Talks Les Moonves' Firing, 'The Talk' Exit In Audiobook
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Julie Chen Moonves is sharing her side of the story. In her new audiobook, “But First, God,” the television personality opens up for the first time about how she found her faith in 2018 following the ouster of husband, Les Moonves, who was forced to step down as the chairman of CBS after he was accused of sexual assault and sexual misconduct.
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At the time, Chen Moonves also exited “The Talk,” a decision she claims that she was pressured into. These changes affected every aspect of her life, and she leaned on her family and her faith the most.
“It was confusing and scary and I was at a loss,” Chen Moonves says in the audiobook. “I just didn’t know what to do. I was scared about how my family was going to react to all of this. You have to understand my parents are old school immigrants. My dad is old school Chinese father — very into being upright and honorable. And it was amazing because my father was one of the people who was there for me and my husband the most. I think he was more upset than my husband and I were.”
From growing up surrounded by racism to how she experienced harsh critics as she came up in broadcasting, to the backlash she faced following her husband’s firing and her allegedly being pushed out of her job, Chen Moonves doesn’t hold back in her latest project, available now.
Scroll down for the biggest revelations.
Leaving ‘The Talk’
In 2018, nine days after Les Moonves was forced out at CBS, Chen Moonves announced she was leaving “The Talk.”
“It was a job that I loved going to, it just made my heart sing. It was my job co-hosting and moderating the CBS daytime talk show called ‘The Talk.’ In short: yes, I was collateral damage. The decision to leave the show was made for me,” she claims her book, before alleging that she received a call the day before Season 9 premiered and was told “with my name and my husband’s name being in the headlines and all this chaos, two of my co-hosts called the powers at CBS and said, ‘If Julie shows up to work tomorrow, we’re not coming in.’ So, I was basically told, ‘Please don’t come back to work anymore.’”
She continues: “After my husband and I left our jobs, I was a ball of mixed emotions and at the top of the list I was angry, I was frustrated, I felt robbed, and I felt wronged. I felt like so many people that I loved and trusted or thought were friends… wow, they did me so dirty.”
Les Moonves’ Exit
During one mention of her husband Les Moonves’ firing, Chen Moonves appears to blame the sexual assault allegations against him on Shari Redstone’s push to merge Viacom and CBS — a decision he didn’t agree with.
“A movement began shortly before 2018 to try and merge CBS with a sister media company. Now, my husband was against this merger, and it was while he was working against the merger to happen that suddenly misconduct allegations against him from decades earlier arose, and that is when he and CBS came to an agreement to separate,” says Chen Moonves. “And 11 months after he left CBS, the merger that he was against did happen.”
Trying to Clear Up the Backlash
After the allegations against Moonves, Chen Moonves felt attacked by the media. In the audiobook, she recalls one report that claimed she stood on a chair during a “The Talk” staff meeting and told the room, “You all make me wanna vomit.”
“Now, I’ll tell you the true story,” she says now. “We were in a small meeting and one of the producers wanted me and my co-hosts to go on the air and basically lie for a story that would sound very sensational and get viewers. But it wasn’t true. It wasn’t true. And I’m a journalist. I went to journalism school.”
She goes on to explain that she refused to lie on-air. “It got to the point where we went toe-to-toe and I remember saying to this person, ‘The gun is in my mouth over this. I’m not doing it. I’m not going on the air and lying,’” she says. “It was basically Julie Chen character assassination time. You could say anything you wanted about me and it would go to print, and it did. And the article even said, no one else corroborated this one story. This one anonymous person said it happened. And it felt awful.”
Experiencing Racism and Getting Eye Surgery
In Chapter 4, Chen Moonves goes into detail about experiencing racism when she was growing up, especially from young kids in grade school, because she looked and spoke differently. While coming up in broadcasting, she was told to “sound like you were from middle America” and that the “preference is, it’s great if you also look more Western.”
“So, there were times growing up when I would look in the mirror and try the scotch tape trick. Anyone who’s Asian knows what I’m talking about. You basically take a piece of Scotch tape that you’ve cut to look like a crescent moon to fit over your eyelid, and you tape it above your lash line. So when you blink and open your eyes, your eyes look bigger, round. More Western, if you will,” she says. “Little did I know back then as a teenager that the shape of my eyes and looking Asian would be something that would be a stumbling block when I started my on-air career. And it did, it became an issue.”
Later in life, she was hired as the morning news anchor in Dayton, Ohio, but when her supervisor left, the new news director told her she couldn’t have the job. Telling her, “Viewers need to relate, and I just don’t think they’re gonna be able to relate to you because we don’t really have an Asian community.”
This led her to New York — but first she wanted to find a new agent. A “top guy in the business” told her he wouldn’t “waste his time” unless she got eyelid surgery, telling her she looked “disinterested or angry when you’re on camera because you have those heavy Asian eyelids.” With that, he gave her a list of plastic surgeons that would do a double eyelid surgery.
“He told me, I guarantee you, if you get this surgery done, you’re going to a Top 10 market right after. You have the talent, but you don’t quite have the look. I remember feeling intrigued, confused, shocked, interested, a little bit insulted, but this guy represented the biggest names in the business, So I thought, you know, he is not saying it to be mean; Let me meditate on this,” she says, noting that she called her parents, who were very supportive. “I thought about it a lot, but ultimately I decided to go for it. I got the eyelid surgery and a year later I landed in New York, but I didn’t sign with that agent.”
Drama With ‘The Talk’ Co-hosts
Chen Moonves says she once went on vacation while on “The Talk” and came back to a “very icy” staff. She then found out that there had been complaints about her.
“A couple of my co-hosts, while I was away, went to the network and said, ‘We can’t work with Julie anymore. She’s too uptight. She’s not one of us. If she stays, we go.’ And they ended up leaving and I ended up staying,” she says. “But what was so hurtful and challenging about this time was that one of the people who left was someone who I became like overnight best friends with after working on ‘The Talk.’ And that was Leah Remini. We were buddies. We were like going on vacation together, and when she went to the network with this request, I felt betrayed.”
In terms of her relationship with Remini, Chen Moonves then “iced her out” for nearly a decade, until “God entered the picture big time.” She went to a party where Remini’s husband, Angelo, performed.
“If I didn’t have Jesus in my life at that point, I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to hunt him down and say hello,” she says, noting that she said hello and later asked for Remini’s phone number. “I know God says to forgive. So I called her, she answered. We laughed. We buried the hatchet. And today we’re probably closer than ever. Leah did try to apologize to me a year after our friendship blew up, but I was too hard-hearted to accept it. Without faith in my life, I didn’t understand the importance of forgiveness, but the Bible tells us very clearly to forgive one another.”
Getting Surgery After ‘The Talk’
Chen Moonves explains the plastic surgery she got after leaving “The Talk” at 48.
“When you work in front of the television and you are a woman, you are expected to look… young, I’m just gonna say it: young. You’re expected to be pleasing to the eye and society, especially Hollywood is not kind on aging women,” she says. “And I knew part of my bread and butter being in front of the camera was to maintain how I looked, stay out of the sun, put on sunblock and yes, if I have to go under the knife. Yes, getting the lower facelift was definitely part of ‘my job’ because I’m expected to look not drastically different from season to season or how people are used to seeing me on TV, but I think I did it as a form of healing, a form of, these meanies can’t get me down. I’m gonna look so good when I come back on the air.”
Chen Moonves continues: “You know how some people, when they get broken up with by a loved one, they get a revenge body? Well, I wanted to get a revenge face. So I got a lower face lift. And I thought, Ooh, no one’s gonna know. They’re just gonna think I look fabulous and rested. But leaving one of my doctor’s appointments looking totally unrecognizable and completely bandaged up like a mummy, little did I know I got caught by the paparazzi.”
Making ‘Big Brother’ Work
Chen Moonves remained — and still remains — at CBS, working as the host of “Big Brother.” After the show’s first season, however, it was unknown whether the show would even continue as it was panned by the critics, who she says “hated” her. However, it was Andy Rooney’s reaction that impacted her the most.
“Andy Rooney said I was a disgrace to the network,” she says. “I remember the headline in the New York Post. It said something like, CBS’s Andy Rooney says the network should fire Julie Chen from the news division. And in essence, what he was saying was, how dare Julie Chen blur the lines between news and entertainment? She should be shipped off to the West Coast immediately and just work for entertainment. He called my casting as the host of Big Brother, quote, ‘A further deterioration of news standards.’”
Eventually, the show began catching on and has since, become a hit — and a place where romances can grow, says Chen Moonves: “Here’s a fun fact: ‘Big Brother US’ has led to more successful marriages than ‘The Bachelor.’ We haven’t had one divorce.”
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