Ann Curry 'Today' Show Firing: Last Months were 'Professional Torture"

Forget what you've heard - Ann Curry's firing from the "Today" show on NBC was even worse than previously reported. The veteran news anchor was a constant target of behind-the-scenes ridicule and outright name-calling during her last year at the program, turning the experience into "professional torture," according to a new tell-all book.

In "Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV" by Brian Stetler, a revealing new portrait of Curry's termination from NBC, Stetler claims that things got so bad for Curry at the "Today" show that staff members were constantly mocking her.

"A lot of time in the control room was spent making fun of Ann's outfit choices or just generally messing with her," one unidentified staffer told Stelter.

Another unnamed staff member told Stetler that in one instance, in spring 2012, numerous employees directly made fun of a bright yellow dress that Curry wore during a taping. Someone reportedly edited an image together of the anchor next to Big Bird with the question attached, "Who Wore it Best?" and left it hanging backstage for everyone to see.

"Today" show executive producer Jim Bell also apparently made his distaste for Curry known to those working at the show. The anchor's boss reportedly "commissioned a blooper reel of Curry's worst on-air mistakes," according to Stetler.

Bell along with NBC may have been responsible for ushering Curry out the door, sources told Stetler. Bell was so concerned about the "Today" show's plunging ratings, and anchor Matt Lauer's apparent dislike for Curry that he "personally" planned to trade her for Savannah Guthrie. Bell has denounced both stories as pure fabrication.

NBC was also so ready to get rid of Curry that the network started rushing her out the office before it even told her they were kicking her to the curb. Before Curry was ultimately fired in June 2012, numerous boxes of her personal items disappeared from her office and "ended up in a coat closet, as if she had already been booted off the premises," Stelter writes in the book.

Ever since Curry lost her job on live TV, the former reporter has admittedly remained "profoundly hurt and humiliated" by her firing from NBC and the jabs she's received from producers and colleagues, Stetler writes.

"She told friends that her final months were a form of professional torture," Stelter says.

In a roughly 8,000-word piece in New York Magazine earlier in March, news emerged that Curry had lost her job because co-anchor Lauer "simply didn't like her."

Lauer was reportedly so unhappy with Curry and the "Today" show that he used a potential position with ABC to leverage a far better contract for himself at NBC at the expense of losing Curry, whose job he did nothing to try and save.