Erin Andrews is looking back and recalling the 2009 traumatic experience of the secret video taken of her in her hotel room.
The 48-year-old TV host and sports commentator appeared on Call Her Daddy, which debuted on Wednesday (September 2), and made rare comments about a stalker filming her through a peephole while she was inside naked.
Erin Andrews recalls stalker leaking a naked video of her that was filmed secretly
“I think back in the day, before, remember when the Apple phones were getting hacked and people’s photos were up, and so forth? I had this disgusting person following me around cities,” Erin told host Alex Cooper. “It was very well publicized where College Game Day was going to be, where Thursday Night Football was going to be, and I didn’t have an alias. I didn’t think I was a big deal. I didn’t, you know, who wants to, who cares about what name I’m checking under? And that’s, as you know, the sad realities of what we do for a living. There’s a lot of amazing things, but when you deal with security, it’s a different level, so I found out.”
“I remember my contract was up. No, my contract wasn’t up. I was gonna get a new agent, you know, when you go to the agent meetings and Dancing with the Stars was calling , and they wanted me to, things were going good. You know, I was working backstage at the ESPYs. I think Justin [Timberlake] was hosting. It was just fun. I can already remember the dress I was wearing, dear God,” she continued. “So, I came back from a bunch of meetings, and I got a call from my friend who was working a blog at the time. Blogs were the big deal and he had been calling me all day and he just said, ‘Erin, I have to talk to you,’ and I was like, ‘What’s up? I’m getting on a red eye to go back to Atlanta,’ and he’s like, ‘There’s naked video of you all over the internet,’” ‘ and I said, ‘No, there’s not, I don’t do that. I just don’t,’ and I didn’t, you know, I was like, ‘What are you talking about? This is made up. This is something that’s not me,’ and he got really, really upset and he goes, ‘Erin, I’m sending it to you,’ and I looked at it, and I said, ‘I have to go.’”
“I called my mom and dad right away. I was screaming crying because it was me, and it was me naked in a hotel room walking around, and I just [had an] out-of-body experience, started screaming. My dad said when I called, he thought I was in a car accident because I was screaming so hard, and we talked about how much I love the job, how I liked kind of being the girl next door, and I just said to my dad, ‘It’s over, my career is over. No one’s going to take me seriously ever again.’ That’s all I ever wanted, right, was people to turn on me and just say, ‘Oh my gosh, I would love to have a beer with her and talk football with her. I would love to do a sit-down interview with her,’ and I just thought, ‘This is so dirty. No one’s going to ever want to work with me again, talk to me again. This is gross. This changes who I am.’”
“We didn’t know anything at that point. Come to find out, after a whole investigation, the FBI gets involved, there’s a trial. There was this disgusting person following me around, and he was setting up his cell phone right up to my hotel room. He would take off the peephole at the door. He would ask for a room next to me, and the hotel never alerted me that this was happening, so they would put this person next to me,” she said. “He would wait and listen, and he could tell when I was getting into the shower because he could hear it, and he would stand there with a camera, and he filmed me getting ready, and then he put it on the internet, and as you know, when something’s on the internet, it doesn’t come down, so it was a lot. It was a lot that I put my family through with all of it. It was a lot legally. It was wild.”
“There’s parts of it that’s still just with me,” Erin added.
She also opened up about the public trauma following the leak.
Erin Andrews on public trauma after nude video leak
“Gross, gross. Wishing in my own hotel room I had worn a towel. You’re getting ready for a game. What were you talking about? Shame. I remember walking around stadiums,” Erin shared. “This is when I was doing college. So, some stadiums have 100,000 people, thinking everybody in the stadium has seen me naked, and I didn’t have a choice. Just if I would talk to people, I feel like in the back of their head, they’re thinking about it.”
“But my safe place, and I’m so proud of this, was the football field, which is wild because you’re sitting there and reporting to 20 million people, and how is that your safe place? But it’s been for a lot of stuff,” she continued. “I mean, the week I was diagnosed with cervical cancer and then had to have, you know, a pretty invasive surgery, they said, ‘Don’t go on the field and stand on the field because you’re not really capable physically.’ I was like, this is my safe space. So that’s how I dealt. I threw myself right back into work.”
“The night he was arrested, I was in a hotel room by myself. I got a call from the gentleman from the FBI, and they said, ‘We got him. We just got on a plane and got him.’ And my dad and I were like, ‘What?’ And they were like, ‘Unfortunately, we have to release this entire document because he’s just been arrested and it’s gonna come out in an hour, but we wanted to give you guys a heads up,” Erin revealed. “I had a game the following day at noon. I think it was like, or probably a one o’clock kick. And my dad and I, we didn’t know the specifics of where he followed me, and it all was out on public record in this whole document. And I’m like, ‘Dad, I have to go study for the Tennessee Volunteers-Auburn Tigers game right now.’ And my dad’s like, ‘Okay, okay.’ You know, so it was just, like, so much wild stuff with that.”
She recalled the public thought she did it to herself, and that was the biggest part.
“I was on the cover of newspapers, just a still frame of the video, my naked body, and it said ESPN scandal,” Erin recalled. “People thought I did it to myself for publicity or to, you know, help my career. Which was the exact opposite of how I was feeling. I was feeling shame, like I would never get work again. I would never be taken seriously. And it was perceived, which is so sad.”
After the public response, Erin says she left her Atlanta home and went to go stay with her parents.
“I hid in my high school bedroom. I was thankful at the time I wasn’t on air yet. I wasn’t going back until college football. But yeah, I hid,” she said. “The crazy part now is just kind of seeing how the world and perception and how people aren’t judged like this. If a crime like this had happened, it would have been a totally different situation.”
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