Lisa Wilkinson on friendship with Karl Stefanovic after 'humiliating' dismissal from Today

Lisa Wilkinson has opened up about being "humiliated" and "betrayed" by former employer Nine when she was "dismissed" from her role as host on the Today show.

The 61-year-old, who now co-hosts The Project, discussed her memoir It Wasn't Meant To Be Like This with journalist Hamish MacDonald on the show last night and shared what it was really like for her to be told she no longer had a job after attempting to close the gender pay gap on the show.

When asked where she was when she found out the news, Lisa responded, "I was standing in aisle six at Woolies holding a can of tuna. I felt stupid and humiliated and betrayed and pretty pathetic."

She added that no one knew she had an offer from Channel Ten on the table, "I think the idea was to humiliate me because I'd been in negotiations to try and close the gender pay gap."

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Hamish questioned how big the gap was, to which she said: "Doesn't get much bigger than the gap that I experienced. I was very expendable. I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye to your audience, I was told 'that's it'."

He then asked whether or not Lisa still has a friendship with Karl and she told him: "Look, we're not really in touch."

"But you'd like to be?" Hamish pushed.

"I'd rather we didn't use this if you don't mind because I don't, I don't want to look like I'm, you know, but I was hurt," she said with tears in her eyes. "I was hurt, but you pick up and you move on, and that's exactly what I did."

Karl and Lisa seemingly continued their friendship and were seen having lunch together weeks after she was dismissed.

At the time, Lisa told Stellar that a lot of the information about her dismissal from Nine was "untrue".

"It was quite shocking some of the narrative that was put out there by my previous employer," she said. "I feel that there was a lot that was said that was untrue. And I won’t say that some of the things I read weren’t pretty painful."

At the 2019 Logies, it was believed the pair had been ignoring each other, however, Lisa dispelled the rumours, telling Spectrum, "I did see Karl at the Logies."

"I went up and said hi towards the end of the evening because I was feeling a bit sorry for him."

She claimed that Karl had been the butt of every joke at the Logies and she wanted to check in on him.

"I just wanted to make sure he was OK. He became everybody's favourite punchline that night and that can't be easy."

Karl was later dumped from Today in 2018 but returned in early 2020 with new co-host Allison Langdon.

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