Meredith Vieira showed up on the Today Show, ready to fill in for Kathie Lee Gifford, whose husband died recently. But something was amiss. Vieira was sporting a pair of dark sunglasses.
Hoda Kotb had to ask.
“Okay, one question because you are so not pretentious and you have on sunglasses in studio,” Hoda Kotb began.
“If you’re going to laugh, I’m not going to tell you,” Meredith Vieira warned. She then removed her sunglasses to reveal a black eye. Immediately, some guy in Jersey tweeted:
“What can you say to a woman with two black eyes? Nothing. You already told her twice.”
But Vieira had a good explanation for her injury. Apparently it was a nighttime potty trip and she tried to make it in the dark.
“I had to go to the bathroom and I didn’t put the light on,” Vieira said. Apparently she had left a suitcase sitting in the way to the bathroom.
“The suitcase is black, and the room is black. It’s dark. … And I go to the bathroom and forget the suitcase is there,” she said. “And I fell over the suitcase and I hit my head on the rim of the dressing room table.”
Meredith Vieira later tweeted about the incident:
“The doc says I’m ok,” she wrote. “But 3 lessons here: turn on the light, ALWAYS get head injuries checked out, and never marry a writer!”
Vieira’s joke about the writer is about her husband, Richard Cohen. Cohen blogged about Meredith’s trip.
“I am the one in my house who has multiple sclerosis. I am the only one who is legally blind. I have limited depth perception and glance off doorways if I am not careful – and I am very cautious – because my lateral perception also is deficient,” Cohen write. “Yet I survive because I have learned self-preservation. I am married to a woman who has not.”
Cohen proceeded to joke about the fall at Vieira’s expense.
“Last night, while paying a visit to the bathroom, Meredith fell over a suitcase, slamming her head against a dressing table as she plummeted south. The dog was so embarrassed for her he did not even bark.”
He was not the only one. Some joked that Meredith Vieira may have been gunning for Kathie Lee’s job and found the task more of a challenge than she had counted on.
So Meredith Vieira must've taken Kathy Lee out while she had the chance, because she's sporting a black eye on The Today Show w/ Hoda Ktobe.
— Still Standing (@agerjets) August 14, 2015