Fresh off her lawsuit settlement with ESPN and Disney, ex-anchor Sage Steele detailed an “impossible to believe” story of the late Barbara Walters trying to “tackle” her.”
“Whoopi saw it.”
Thursday, Steele appeared on “The Megyn Kelly Show” just two days after announcing an end of her 16-year stint with ESPN. The nearly two-and-a-half hour discussion covered a range of topics but a story about a heated 2014 exchange between her guest and Walters demanded attention.
“If I don’t ask you about Barbara Walters — she attacked you!? Wait, what?” host Megyn Kelly asked containing her own laughter. “What happened?”
“It was Barbara, Whoopi [Goldberg], and myself in the dark green room off to the side,” recalled Steele of an appearance on ABC’s “The View” where her and her fellow Disney employees had just had an on-air tiff over then-President Barack Obama.
“I was probably about four feet from the wall and the trash can, and Barbara was standing over here in front of me,” the former anchor explained. “And she just started to back up towards me and looked at me and got close and elbowed me, and it pushed me back into the wall and the trash can.”
“I was like, “What did this…just do to me? This 140-year-old woman just tried to, like, tackle me,” claimed Steele.
“Some of the producers saw it. Whoopi saw it. And Whoopi was like, ‘Come here,’ and she was great,” she continued. “And she pulled me aside in her little area and she’s like, ‘Don’t you let her do it.’ And I’m like, ‘Am I in a movie right now? A legend — one of the legends in this industry just tried to beat me up!'”
The former ESPN employee had just announced her settlement with the network and its parent company on Tuesday with undisclosed terms by posting to X, “Life update. Having successfully settled my case with ESPN/Disney, I have decided to leave so I can exercise my first amendment rights more freely. I am grateful for so many wonderful experiences over the past 16 years and am excited for my next chapter!”
Sports anchor Sage Steele sticks it to ESPN one last time following lawsuit settlementhttps://t.co/37X4UfGbcE
— American Wire News (@americanwire_) August 15, 2023
Steele had alleged in that suit that she had been briefly suspended for remarks in Sept. 2021 on former NFL quarterback Jay Cutler’s podcast, “Jay Cutler’s Uncut.” In addition to her opposition to mandatory COVID shots to keep her job, she had also spoken about Walters’s supposed habit of mocking her biracial heritage.
The clip, which Kelly had played during her interview, included Steele detailing how Walters had once asked her what race she selected on the U.S. Census. At the time, she had replied both, and Walters had said, “Obama chose black and he’s biracial.”
“I’m like, well, congratulations to the president, that’s his thing,” Steele had said to Cutler. “I think that’s fascinating considering his black dad was nowhere to be found, but his white mom and grandma raised him. But hey, you do you, I’m gonna do me.”
A representative for the Walters’ estate provided a statement to multiple outlets that read, “I find this impossible to believe and uncharacteristic of Barbara!”
Meanwhile, reactions on social media were overwhelming in support of Steele.
What an amazing person. I stopped watching @espn a long time ago, but @sagesteele is an amazing person. She is going to do a lot of great things with whatever the next chapter holds for her. Wow.
— David (@harrid4) August 18, 2023
I’m sure Sage is a lady, but she should have given BabaWawa a nice, big shiner that makeup wouldn’t cover!
— Dawg House Takes (@80AlumniDawg) August 17, 2023
@sagesteele is a national treasure. The way she uses adversity to fuel her fire is a testament to the effects of being raised in a loving home with a strong father figure. She is made from unbreakable steel.
I admire her and the precious mother who raised her. #steelestrong— Patricia Baird (@patricious79) August 18, 2023
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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