Lisa Guerrero says FHM photoshoot sabotaged her job at ‘Monday Night time Soccer’
Lisa Guerrero was typically seemed as much as as “the luckiest lady in sports activities” after she landed her dream job as a sideline correspondent for Monday Night time Soccer in 2013. In her new e book Warrior she reveals how the position changed into a nightmare that led her to a darkish place.
Producer Freddie Gaudelli employed Guerrero for the aim of fixing the panorama of sports activities broadcasting by incorporating a reporter who leaned into leisure as effectively, Guerrero defined in an excerpt revealed by Sports Illustrated. But it surely ended up being exterior opinions of her look, her data and her worth as a sports activities reporter that turned a degree of competition between herself and her employer.
“‘Nothing however a teleprompter reader.’ ‘A ridiculous new low for ABC.’ ‘One other instance of appears taking priority over expertise.’ ‘A bimbo.’ ‘A blow for girls.'” Guerrero listed as a few of the responses to the announcement of her hiring. “What had I executed to ignite such anger? I used to be shocked, damage and totally baffled by the media’s response.”
As audiences put Guerrero’s earlier decade of expertise as a sports activities reporter to the facet, they leaned into what they known as her “controversial previous” as a mannequin, actor and cheerleader. Finally, photographs of the reporter had been launched that put her begin at Monday Night time Soccer in danger.
“I’d executed a photograph shoot for FHM, a males’s way of life journal, which was scheduled to run at first of the soccer season. This had been a strategic resolution to advertise my model and lift my profile whereas I used to be at [The Best Damn Sports Show Period]. However when the media obtained wind of the photographs of me clad in black-and-white lingerie, it bolstered their notion that I’d been employed on Monday Night time Soccer for all of the mistaken causes.”
Guerrero recalled Disney executives being “irate” after they discovered in regards to the photoshoot and questioning her place on their “family-friendly broadcast.” Nevertheless, she chalked the response as much as “feigned shock” as the corporate’s publicity division allegedly ended up negotiating with FHM to place her on the duvet.
“Then, for the present’s promotional photographs, I posed in a powder-blue blazer subsequent to [co-hosts Al Michaels and John Madden]. But the photographs that made the minimize, together with on a Occasions Sq. billboard, weren’t from that official ABC picture shoot,” she continued. “As a substitute, with out my permission, they superimposed a photograph—during which I wore a gold-sequined tube high and a come-hither look—that was taken from a modeling gig I had executed years earlier.”
Whereas Guerrero believed that she was initially employed for her {qualifications}, she observed that the unfavorable publicity had an impression on her working relationships and the way a lot her producer trusted her to do the job.
“Loads of eyes could be on me, too — judging me, writing about me, commenting on me. Any flub could be magnified. My outfit and make-up — even my lip gloss — could be scrutinized,” she mentioned of the time main into the primary common season recreation of Monday Night time Soccer. And regardless of all of her preparation, her producer instructed her to memorize the phrases he’d write for her and to not improvise.
“I believed that I knew what was behind this request. Freddie might have been embarrassed by the media’s depiction of me. I felt that he couldn’t fireplace me, as a result of I used to be his first rent,” she wrote. “So as a substitute of firing me, Freddie would micromanage me. Possibly he thought he’d be the brains behind the bimbo.”
Guerrero continued, “I’d been writing my copy for a decade, however immediately I felt lowered to a ventriloquist’s dummy. After I delivered Freddie’s phrases, it was unnatural. It didn’t sound like me. I felt like an actress taking part in a task that I wasn’t meant to play. And there have been critics who picked up on this. They’d say I seemed uncomfortable, that I glanced down at my pocket book an excessive amount of. However I had been directed by Freddie to ship his script verbatim. If I didn’t, I’d get reamed out.”
She recalled Gaudelli screaming into her earpiece as she did stay broadcasts and struggling beneath the stress to excel at her job with all issues in opposition to her. That struggling stayed together with her in any respect hours of the day and evening, even in her happiest moments.
Now, an award-winning investigative journalist, Guerrero cannot imagine how darkish it turned, as she wrote about her engagement to baseball participant boyfriend Scott Erickson being soured by the undercurrent of melancholy. “Who decides to get married after they’re additionally contemplating killing themselves?” she remembered pondering.
She additionally opened up about experiencing a miscarriage whereas doing a stay sports activities report.
“I didn’t see that I used to be on a harmful downward spiral. I didn’t see that I had grow to be utterly indifferent from actuality. I didn’t see how sick I used to be—mentally and bodily. I used to be utterly checked out,” she wrote.
After that have, she determined to take a stance.
“I considered all I’d misplaced on these sidelines—my dignity, my braveness, and now my being pregnant. There was nothing left to take. At that second, I vowed to cease letting Freddie have a lot management over me,” she mentioned. “Throughout the previous few video games, I ended memorizing Freddie’s notes. I spoke in my very own voice. I pulled out my earpiece throughout my reviews. That approach, if Freddie was screaming at me, I might by no means know.”
When you or somebody you recognize is experiencing suicidal ideas, name 911, or name the Nationwide Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-8255 or textual content HOME to the Disaster Textual content Line at 741741.
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