Where Is Brooke Nevils Now? What to Know About Her Life Nearly a Decade After Accusing Matt Lauer of Rape

Warning: This story contains explicit language and graphic descriptions of sexual assault and misconduct.

Nearly a decade after accusing former NBC anchor Matt Lauer of rape, Brooke Nevils is sharing more of her side of the story.

In 2008, the Missouri native began working at NBC as a page, eventually becoming a producer years later. In 2017, she filed a complaint against the NBC co-host alleging that he had anally raped her during the 2014 Winter Olympics, and detailing several other instances of sexual misconduct once they returned to New York.

Lauer was fired, but also denied raping Nevils in a lengthy letter to Variety in 2019. Nevils took a leave of absence that eventually became permanent, and shared her story in her own words for the first time in Ronan Farrow’s 2019 book, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators.

Now, her new memoir Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe revisits the harrowing experience. In an excerpt of the memoir published by The Cut on Jan. 28, Nevils opens up about how she has “painstakingly rebuilt” her life.

So, where is Brooke Nevils now? Here’s everything to know about her life nearly a decade after accusing Matt Lauer of sexual harassment and assault.

Nevils began working at NBC in 2008

Nevils graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2007 with a double major in political science and the Writing Seminars, according to a 2010 interview with Johns Hopkins University’s Arts & Sciences Magazine.

After college, she began her career as a page for NBC at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. In her role, Nevils’ job was to greet the celebrity guests and get them to the set on time for their interviews.

Once her position as a page ended, Nevils moved on to a 10-month post as personal assistant to former Today co-host Meredith Vieira. Her daily tasks were to fetch lunch, run errands and gather research for the famous journalist to help her prep for interviews, and she called the role a “great learning experience.”

Nevils eventually landed a job as a producer for NBC, which involved 60-plus hour workweeks, filled with pitching stories, conducting research, finding guests and packaging the three-to-five-minute segments on the show, she told Arts & Sciences.

In 2014, as the assistant producer for A Leap of Faith: A Meredith Vieira Special, Nevils was nominated for an Emmy award for outstanding feature story in a news magazine with the rest of the production team.

Nevils was also billed as a producer on several high-profile shows for NBC, including Headliners, 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? and Royal Wedding Watch.

Nevils accused Lauer of first sexually assaulting her during the 2014 Sochi Olympics

It wasn’t until 2017 that Nevils filed a complaint against Lauer to NBC executives, though she alleged that the incidents actually happened years earlier, beginning with the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

Nevils said she was tasked in Sochi with working with Vieira, who’d been brought back to Today to do Olympics coverage, and they ran into Lauer at the hotel bar one night.

At the end of the night, Nevils, who’d had several shots of vodka, went to Lauer’s hotel room twice — once to retrieve her press credential, which Lauer had taken as a joke, and the second time because he invited her back, she claimed in Farrow’s book.

Once she was in his hotel room, Nevils alleged that Lauer kissed her, then pushed her onto the bed and asked if she liked anal sex. Farrow wrote that Nevils said she “declined several times,” but he allegedly “just did it” and didn’t use lubricant. Nevils claimed the encounter was painful and that she “bled for days.”

“It was nonconsensual in the sense that I was too drunk to consent,” she told Farrow in the book. “It was nonconsensual in that I said, multiple times, that I didn’t want to have anal sex.”

After Sochi, there were several more instances of what NBC News later labeled as “alleged ‘inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace’ ” between the former employees before she filed the 2017 complaint. In her memoir excerpt, Nevils said it took her years and a “national reckoning with sexual harassment and assault” before she called what happened to her assault.

Lauer was fired but denied raping Nevils

Lauer was fired one day after Nevils filed a complaint, with more allegations from other individuals being reported by Variety and The New York Times.

When the rape allegations surfaced, NBC wrote in a statement: “Matt Lauer’s conduct was appalling, horrific and reprehensible, as we said at the time. That’s why he was fired within 24 hours of us first learning of the complaint. Our hearts break again for our colleague.”

Days later, he claimed in a statement read on air by Today anchor Savannah Guthrie that some of the allegations against him were “untrue or mischaracterized.”

After Farrow’s book was published in 2019, Lauer denied raping Nevils in a lengthy letter to Variety, saying he had an “extramarital, but consensual, sexual encounter” with her.

He claimed that Nevils’ accusation is “categorically false, ignores the facts, and defies common sense,” dismissing the claims as “part of a promotional effort to sell a book.”

Her mental health struggles led her to spend time in a psych ward

In her excerpt published by The Cut, Nevils detailed how her mental health suffered in the wake of the alleged incidents with Lauer. Though she remained in her role at NBC for a few months after reporting the complaint, Nevils eventually took a “leave of absence that would ultimately prove permanent.”

“I barely recognized the train wreck I’d become,” she said. “I was compulsive, paranoid, and drinking all the time. I felt I’d ruined everything, hurt and embarrassed everyone I loved.”

Nevils revealed that she went on to spend time in a psych ward, “believing myself so worthless and damaged that the world would be better off without me.”

She previously revealed in Farrow’s book that she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after filing the complaint. Farrow wrote that Nevils had not only been “hospitalized,” but she also allegedly attempted suicide.

Nevils eventually got married and had kids

In the excerpt, Nevils shared she has since gotten married and is now a mother of two.

“Every moment with my family is a precious piece of the life that I once believed I no longer deserved to live,” she wrote, without disclosing the names of her spouse or children. She did, however, share that she has at least one daughter.

Where is Brooke Nevils now?

Nevils has stayed primarily out of the spotlight, keeping her family life private. However, her new memoir, which explores the aftermath of the alleged experience of being assaulted by and reporting Lauer, will be published on Feb. 3.

“I have spent the long years since using my otherwise abandoned skills as a journalist to report and write the book about sexual harassment and assault that I wish had existed for me,” Nevils wrote in the excerpt shared by The Cut.

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to hotline.rainn.org.

If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or go to suicidepreventionlifeline.org.