Veteran sportscaster Erin Andrews shared that she thought her career was over after a video of her nude leaked on the internet in 2009, slamming the violation as “gross.”
Andrews, who currently serves as the lead NFL sideline reporter for Fox Sports, opened up about the ordeal during a Wednesday appearance on “Call Her Daddy.”
“I think back in the day, before … the Apple phones were getting hacked and people’s photos were up and so forth, I had this disgusting person following me around cities,” Andrews recalled of her stalker in the mid-’00s. “It was very well publicized where [ESPN’s] ‘College Game Day’ was going to be, where ‘Thursday Night Football’ was going to be and I didn’t have an alias. I didn’t think I was a big deal.”
Nonetheless, Andrews noted that her career was on the rise, receiving calls about “Dancing With the Stars” and working backstage at the ESPYs. However, this joy came to a screeching halt after Andrews received a call from a blogger friend, who she shared had been trying to reach her all day.
“Blogs were the big deal and he had been calling me all day and he just said, ‘Erin, I have to talk to you,’ and I was like, ‘What’s up? I’m getting on a red eye to go back to Atlanta,’ and he’s like, ‘There’s naked video of you all over the internet,’” she remembered. “And I said, ‘No, there’s not, I don’t do that. I just don’t.’ And I didn’t, you know, I was like, ‘What are you talking about? This is made up. This is something that’s not me.’”
Andrews shared that this friend then sent her the footage, which quickly prompted a strong reaction from the sports journalist.
“I called my mom and dad, right away. I was screaming, crying because it was me and it was me naked in a hotel room walking around and I just, outer body experience, started screaming,” she said. “My dad said when I called, he thought I was in a car accident because I was screaming so hard.”
Andrews said the leak rattled her, given her love of the job and the way she was viewed as “being the girl next door.”
“I just said to my dad, ‘It’s over, my career is over. No one’s going to take me seriously ever again,’” she shared. “That’s all I ever wanted, right, was people to turn me on and just say, ‘Oh my gosh, I would love to have a beer with her and talk football with her. I would love to do a sit down interview with her.’ And I just thought, ‘This is so dirty. No one’s going to ever want to work with me again, talk to me again. This is gross. This changes who I am.’”
Andrews shared that she didn’t know any of the specifics at that time, noting that it eventually led to “a whole investigation,” which involved the FBI and a trial. Specifically, Michael David Barrett was arrested three months after the video was uploaded on the internet. He was charged with interstate stalking before pleading guilty in 2009. Barrett went on to serve over two years in prison.
“There was this disgusting person following me around and he was setting up his cell phone right up to my hotel room,” she said. “He would take off the peephole at the door. He would ask for a room next to me, and the hotel never alerted me that this was happening. So, they would put this person next to me.”
Andrews explained how the stalker would “wait and listen” for her to get into the shower, adding, “He would stand there with a camera and he filmed me getting ready and then he put it on the internet.”
The sportscaster noted that she learned the hard way that “when something’s on the internet, it doesn’t come down.”
“So, it was a lot. It was a lot that I put my family through with all of it,” she shared. “It was a lot legally. It was wild.”
Andrews noted that in the aftermath she struggled with “shame” and embarrassment, saying, “I remember walking around stadiums – this is when I was doing college, so, some stadiums have 100,000 people – thinking everybody in the stadium has seen me naked and I didn’t have a choice.”
Watch Andrews’ “Call Her Daddy” interview above.
