Erin Andrews says that one of the hardest moments during her ordeal with a stalker more than a decade ago was calling her parents to let them know she’d been secretly videotaped.
The Fox Sports broadcaster opened up to Hoda Kotb in the newest episode of Kotb’s “Making Space” podcast about the 2008 incident that landed stalker Michael David Barrett in prison and resulted in Andrews, 45, living with post-traumatic stress.
TODAY.com shared an excerpt from the interview on Monday, and it will be released in full on Wednesday.
Barrett secretly filmed Andrews several times through a peephole while she was naked in her room at a Nashville hotel in 2008. Barrett also filmed Andrews at a hotel in Columbus, Ohio, and the videos were put online in 2009.
“People thought it was a scandal, and I’m the square from high school,” Andrews told Hoda.
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“I don’t do those things. I knew the second I got the phone call from my friend at Sports Illustrated that he said, there’s this video. And I said, ‘No, there’s not. I don’t do that. I’m single. I don’t have that going on in my life.’ He’s like, ‘Erin, it’s you.’”
Andrews said she made an anguished phone call to her parents after watching the video.
“My dad says he thought I had been in a car accident because I was just screaming,” Andrews said. “And I feel so bad. My parents were incredible. I was, God, in my thirties when that happened, and I resorted to acting like a 15-year-old because, in terms of not wanting to deal, my parents really, they were on the forefront.”
Barrett, who during a civil trial admitted to altering the peepholes, served 2½ years in prison for interstate stalking and was released in 2012.
Four years later, Andrews won a $55 million lawsuit against Barrett and the companies that managed the Nashville Marriott hotel where the videos were filmed.
