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‘NBC Nightly News’ Alum Brian Williams Returns With Podcast Decade After Credibility Scandal
Brian Williams returns with We’re Back, a new Netflix video podcast featuring relaxed conversations with creative, funny, smart, and consequential figures.
Journalist Brian Williams is making a comeback with an upcoming Netflix podcast.
The former NBC Nightly News anchor, 66 — who was suspended from his post in 2015 after embellishing a story about his 2003 coverage of the Iraq War — will launch a video podcast with the streamer titled We’re Back! With Brian Williams, The Hollywood Reporter reported on Thursday, April 16.
Netflix said, according to THR, that viewers can expect prominent figures to sit down with Williams for “relaxed, wide-ranging exchanges about their work, their lives, and the moment we’re living through.”
“With scientists predicting that every American will have a podcast by 2030, I thought it was time to get in the game,” Williams said in a statement, per Deadline.
“After 40 years in the news business, where an in-depth interview gets 4 minutes of airtime at best, I just want to have interesting conversations with creative, funny, smart, talented, and consequential people — like the shows we all grew up watching and listening to,” he added. “Netflix is the perfect home.”
The podcast will reportedly be executive produced by Jonathan Wald. A release date has not yet been announced.
Williams, also known for The 11th Hour with Brian Williams, was plagued by controversy more than a decade ago after claiming that he was flying in a military helicopter that had been “forced down after being hit by an RPG,” per the Los Angeles Times.
The journalist was reportedly in a separate helicopter that had not been fired upon.
“Sorry dude, I don’t remember you being on my aircraft,” flight engineer Lance Reynolds wrote on Facebook at the time, per the New York Times. “I do remember you walking up about an hour after we had landed to ask me what had happened.”
After Williams apologized, he released a statement that February explaining that he was taking a leave from NBC Nightly News.
“It has become painfully apparent to me that I am presently too much a part of the news, due to my actions,” he said, per the L.A. Times. “Upon my return, I will continue my career-long effort to be worthy of the trust of those who place their trust in us.”
Williams later returned to the air on MSNBC.
