Lisa Wilkinson delivers tribute to Today show in 40th anniversary special

Five years after a dramatic and headline-grabbing exit from the Today show, Lisa Wilkinson has popped up in a segment on the breakfast show.

Lisa Wilkinson has made a surprise appearance on her former TV hosting slot — popping up on Channel 9’s Today show to celebrate the program’s 40th anniversary.

It comes five years after The Project star’s dramatic exit from the breakfast show, which Wilkinson divulged in great detail in the pages of her memoir, It Wasn’t Meant To Be Like This.

In the 2021 release,Wilkinsonclaimed co-host Karl Stefanovic went behind her back to secure a higher-paying deal despite a secret pact the pair had made, and she was subsequently blindsided by her abrupt sacking.

But the recent Logie-winner clearly still has some fond memories of her 10-year-stint on the desk beside Stefanovic, blowing a kiss to viewers in her prerecorded tribute to the program.

Lisa Wilkinson appeared on the Today show this morning. Picture: Channel 9.

“A big piece of my heart with always stay right there with the Today show family and all the years we spent together at breakfast,” the media personality, 62, said.

Last year, Wilkinson aired her feelings about her exit from the show in candid excerpts of her book.

Karl Stefanovic and Lisa Wilkinson at the Logie awards nomination announcement in May. Picture: Getty Images.

Reflecting on what became her final day on air, Wilkinson said she was “quietly fuming” because “almost every interview was done by Stefanovic alone”.

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 later, while shopping at her local Woolworths, she received a phone call from her manager Nick, who had just finished a meeting with Nine’s CEO Hugh Marks.

He told her that she was “permanently off” the Today show, and would never return.

Karl and Lisa hosting Today the morning after the Logies in 2009.

Speaking to Hamish Macdonald on The Project ahead of her book release, Wilkinson said the idea of her dismissal was to “humiliate” her, because she’d been in negotiations to try and close the pay gap with her co-host.

“I was very expendable,” she said, noting the gap she had with Stefanovic “doesn’t get much bigger” than what she experienced.

“I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to the audience. I was just told – that’s it.”

Wilkinson, who worked side-by-side with Stefanovic for a decade, said she no longer has a relationship with him.

“We are not really in touch,” she admitted, adding she was “hurt” by their subsequent breakdown after she exited the breakfast show.