Leaked video shows Lisa Wilkinson’s last episode of Today with Karl Stefanovic

Newly-leaked video shows what went down in what was to be Lisa Wilkinson and Karl Stefanovic’s final episode of the breakfast show together.

A newly leaked video shows exactly what happened during the opening minutes of the 2017 Today episode that was to be Lisa Wilkinson’s final appearance as co-host.

Wilkinson opened up about her “bizarre” final episode co-hosting alongside Karl Stefanovic in her new book. She writes that her co-host ignored her before the cameras rolled, she was left reeling from a question he asked her during the show’s opening seconds, and that she then found herself sidelined for much of the program.

That infamous intro

Unearthed footage shows Lisa's last day at Today.

Stefanovic opened the show, which aired on Monday, October 16 2017, by welcoming Wilkinson back from her second honeymoon. She and husband of 25 years Peter FitzSimons had renewed their vows 10 days earlier. Stefanovic was invited to the celebration, but cancelled via text last-minute.

“We’ve got P!nk on today, just for Lisa and her honeymoon return — Lisa, good morning to you,” he said.

“How good is that? It’s so lovely to be back, and thank you to everyone for all your beautiful messages. We’ve had a fabulous honeymoon, but back to work today,” she said.

Stefanovic then asked her where she had spent the time off.

“We went to beautiful Byron Bay, because we love Australia,” she told him, which earned a sheepish giggle from Stefanovic, who had just been holidaying overseas with new partner Jasmine Yarbrough.

Wilkinson also noted that Today had been filming in the same area during her time off: “And you guys were in the Tweed on Friday! We went to dinner at the place you guys were at next — we skedaddled out of there just before you guys arrived,” she teased.

“Nice to have you back,” said Stefanovic, before the pair introduced newsreader Sylvia Jeffreys and sports reporter Tim Gilbert, also on the desk.

Wilkinson and FitzSimons renew their vows on October 6, 2017 – 10 days before her dramatic exit from the Today show.

In her upcoming memoir, It Wasn’t Meant To Be Like This, Wilkinson reveals that her vow renewal celebration was actually a major source of tension, after Stefanovic dropped out of the event last minute via text.

“Karl and his new partner Jas had been invited but dropped out just two days before via a text to Pete saying that they were extending an overseas trip and wouldn’t be attending,” she wrote, adding how strange it was he hadn’t contacted her with apologies nor congratulations.

She wrote that she went into her first show back at the desk “upset” — which was compounded by the fact Stefanovic hadn’t contacted her in the 10 days since the celebration, and did not check in with her until cameras were rolling that morning, when he warmly congratulated her for the first time.

“I don’t think the pause I took in that exact moment was picked up by the cameras, but in my mind it lasted an eternity. Now I get the congratulations? Because the cameras are on?” she wrote.

“What did Karl expect me to say? ‘Yeah, I did Karl and I invited you, you said yes, and at the last minute you didn’t show up and haven’t said a single word to me since?’”

As Wilkinson recalls the incident in her book, she writes that she instead responded: “Yeah, I did Karl, but why would anybody care about that when it’s news time? Good morning.”

After that comment, she said: “Karl knew I had cut him dead, something I had never done on or off air before.”

“For the next two hours, I exchanged not a single word with Karl outside of what was scripted – because for the first time, I just didn’t trust myself to ‘play nice’,” she wrote.

That ‘bizarre’ final episode

It Wasn't Meant To Be Like This is out November 3.

Elsewhere in Wilkinson’s new memoir, the veteran journalist and broadcaster writes that she found herself sidelined during that final episode, which aired just hours before her sudden axing from the Nine Network over contract and salary issues.

“Almost every interview was being done by Karl alone,” she wrote, calling the show’s rundown “bizarre”: “I had just about nothing to do.”

She said she even messaged the show’s executive producer Mark Calvert during an ad break to ask what was going on, but got no response.

“For two hours, I sat there feeling completely useless. The Today Show was now The Karl Show. What was the point of me even being there?” Wilkinson writes in her autobiography.

Hours after the episode ended, Wilkinson was shopping in Woolworths when she received a phone call from her manager, who told her she was “off the show”.

“Permanently off. Never to appear again,” he told her. “Today was your last day.”

Lisa and Karl’s pay wars

Wilkinson and Stefanovic in 2007, just after she joined The Today Show.

In her memoir Wilkinson writes that the pay gap between her and Stefanovic was “so off the charts that no-one would have believed it — and much bigger than that figure that had been conveniently leaked”. Contract negotiations with the network failed, she writes, due to her attempts to get pay parity with her co-host.

In an exclusive news.com.au report yesterday, insiders revealed that Wilkinson earned double Stefanovic’s salary for many years.

News.com.au understands that when she first signed with Nine in 2006 she was earning more than $700,000, on a three-year contract worth more than $2m. The fresh-faced Stefanovic, who had just returned from a reporting stint in Los Angeles, earned less than half that amount for years as the show’s popularity grew, and continued to earn less than her for seven years.

However, by the time of her 2017 axing from Today, Stefanovic had struck a new deal that meant he would be earning $2 million per year — more than double what she was earning at the network.

Lisa: Why I’m speaking out

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph yesterday, Wilkinson explained why she wanted to set the record straight about her departure from Nine, four years on.

“What’s out there at the moment looks like I am trying to attack Karl, but as you know in the book, that’s not what I’m doing,” she said.

“I’m just not keeping men’s secrets anymore. I think, as women, when we do that all we do is strengthen the boys’ club and we do women a disservice.”

It Wasn’t Meant To Be Like This is out November 3.