Adam Carolla addressed the fallout from his firing of Alison Rosen on Wednesday morning’s podcast.
Carolla began by acknowledging: “I know everyone thinks there’s something all the time.”
He continued, “People are like, ‘Why didn’t you have the decency of having her on to say goodbye?’ And I’d had this conversation in no certain terms with Alison many times where we agreed — on the air, possibly off the air — that if something like this was going to go down we’d rather find out in an email.”
That contradicts with what Rosen told TheWrap exclusively in a post-canning conversation. She told us, “I wish he had talked to me.”
In response to Carolla’s remarks Wednesday, Rosen told TheWrap: “I have zero recollection of having expressed any sort of genuine desire to be fired by email should I one day be fired by ‘The Adam Carolla Show.’ I valued that job and would have preferred a conversation like anyone. I’m not saying I never joked about anything to that effect on air. I conversed for 90-plus minutes five days a week for four years — a zillion topics came up on that show that I chimed in on. But there’s a difference between on-air banter and actually having expressed some sort of professional preference regarding my employment, which, again, I didn’t realize was in jeopardy.”
The podcast in which Carolla addressed Rosen’s axing also included Swedish podcasters Filip and Fredrik as guests, as well as show regular David Wild. Carolla recounted the story of how awkward it was for him and former partner Jimmy Kimmel to terminate their manager face-to-face — a story he says he shared with Rosen and didn’t want to relive with her.
“I know to you, the listeners, it’s owed — but I didn’t do it out of selfishness, I did it because I thought it would be really uncomfortable for me and for Alison,” Carolla said. “She had declared many times that, ‘If I go the way of the dodo, send me an email.’”
Carolla admitted he had “horrible timing” by announcing the news in a quick, somewhat cold manner while simultaneously preaching the value and importance of new “News Girl” Gina Grad’s former KSLX boss Tim Conway Jr. being able to say goodbye on the air years ago when they all worked together.
“The reality is, I didn’t want to sit here and have a 90-minute awkward moment with Alison,” Carolla said.
Carolla also admitted that he didn’t physically type the firing email, but they were his words — not surprising for any of his regular listeners. Carolla is a famously bad typist who dictates even his best-selling books to someone else to actually write them out.
“I just creatively wanted to move on,” he said. “And I don’t know how to explain it — I don’t want to pull an artist card here. All I ever do is just sort of go, ‘Well, what’s next? What shall I do?’ And I never really ask people, and I never really sit and stare in the mirror and I don’t go up and talk to the yogis about it — I just sort of sit on it for a while and I go ‘This is what I want to do.’”
“I just didn’t think this was her role, which is not a bad thing to say,” he said. “Dave Grohl’s job wasn’t to be the drummer — it was to be the Foo Fighters lead singer.”
“I should have done a better job,” Carolla admitted of breaking the news to fans via a short, curt podcast announcement. “Lesson learned, sorry.”