A former This Morning employee has revealed what it was like to work on the show’s set, which included not being able to talk to hosts Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby.
Emily Maddick was the show’s Head of News from September to December 2019, however she left due to what she called “bullying, sexism, and a toxic culture of fear and intimidation.”
She has now described her experience following Schofield’s departure, when he acknowledged to a ‘unwise but not criminal’ romance with a considerably younger colleague, prompting ITV to launch an external probe.
After former colleagues such as Eamonn Holmes and Dr Ranj Singh spoke out about the ‘toxic atmosphere,’ Maddick has now released excerpts from her departure interview three years after departing.
‘I am sad to report there is a culture of intimidation at This Morning and on a number of occasions this has prevented me from doing my job to the best of my ability,’ she wrote in a piece published on Glamour, where she now works.
Maddick recalled a ‘environment of dread,’ saying she had ‘overheard’ what she perceived to be sexist comments at times, and cited instances of bullying that made her worry for the’mental health’ of her staff.
She didn’t hold back when she described how reports about Schofield and his young male partner were circulating at the time, which Maddick termed a ‘open secret’ and accused ‘people in authority’ of being ‘complicit’ in failing to confront it.
Turning her focus to Schofield and Willoughby, 42, Maddick stated that they were everything but the ‘happy fun, friendly, and fits-of-fizzy-giggles-funny as they seemed on TV’.
Despite being in charge of a crew that ‘worked diligently around the clock’ to provide the presenters with ‘fodder for their warm sofa discussions every day,’ Maddick said she was ‘not authorised’ to speak with either of them.
During her three months on the job, the journalist did not talk to Schofield, who she claimed ‘glared’ at her on multiple occasions, and only engaged with Willoughby once, when she held open a door for the presenter and ‘complimented her skirt’.
‘They were treated like gods, kept in a gilded cage, with their daily meetings with the editor held in their dressing rooms, away from the team,’ she said.
Maddick did, however, praise other speakers, including Holmes and Ruth Lagngsford, as well as Alison Hammond, Vanessa Feltz, and Dr Ranj, for being “super friendly, helpful, and welcoming.”
‘I was flabbergasted by how utterly fake it all was,’ she wrote in the piece.
Maddick described watching the two presenters’ demeanour shift on her first day, as the ‘perma-smiles quickly slipped’ and Schofield would ‘often have a face like thunder moaning about minute elements that he felt were going wrong or portions he didn’t like’.
‘Holly would often just sit scrolling through her phone,’ she added.
Maddick described a “pervading culture of competitive exhaustion and burn-out” and said she “slept very little” during her time on the programme, which she described as “some of the darkest months of my career.”
She went on to say that she worked with “some brilliant, kind, and supportive colleagues.” Maddick also stated that the programme had done some ‘extraordinary and significant’ work over the years, and that it had ‘undoubtedly offered millions of viewers enormous comfort, pleasure, and enjoyment’.
But after being asked to secure a story ‘about a woman who was breastfeeding her husband to keep their marriage alive’, she decided it was time to leave.
‘If only senior members of the team had employed their own moral compasses a bit more, then perhaps This Morning, and Phillip Schofield, wouldn’t be in such a sorry state today,’ she concluded her piece.
In a statement, ITV said that ‘as a producer and broadcaster, ITV takes its responsibilities around Duty of Care and Speaking Up seriously and has robust and well-established processes in place’.
This Morning airs weekdays from 10am on ITV1.
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