Bill O’Reilly is attempting to once again silence Andrea Mackris, the former producer who in 2004 settled a sexual-harassment lawsuit with the then-Fox News star and earlier this month told her story in vivid detail to The Daily Beast.
Mackris was scheduled to appear Wednesday morning on ABC’s daytime talk show The View, but on Tuesday evening O’Reilly was granted a temporary restraining order against his ex-staffer, effectively canceling her TV hit in the process.
“We were notified late yesterday about a temporary restraining order issued by a court against Andrea Mackris. We decided to postpone her interview pending further developments,” an ABC spokesperson said in a statement to The Daily Beast. “We look forward to welcoming her to The View at a later date.”
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Upon learning that Mackris was set to appear on The View, O’Reilly’s attorneys petitioned the New York State Supreme Court in Nassau County for a restraining order because, they argued, “Mackris intends to further materially breach her legal obligations tomorrow morning, live on national television.” Her going public with the details of O’Reilly’s alleged conduct has caused “significant irreparable harm” to the former Fox News star, the lawyers further argued. The order was granted on Tuesday evening. O’Reilly did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bizarrely, the restraining order was not served directly on Mackris. Instead, O’Reilly’s counsel suggested The Daily Beast should forward the court documents to her—a scenario shot down by the court, which wrote that O’Reilly’s team must notify the former producer.
“I have not been served with anything, but apparently Bill O’Reilly was able to interfere with my appearance on The View,” Mackris told The Daily Beast on Wednesday morning. “I hope the days of the law allowing the silencing of women are over. I will continue to fight for my voice.”
In its petition for a restraining order, O’Reilly’s legal team baselessly suggested The Daily Beast “coached” Mackris “concerning her legal obligations.”
As part of her $9 million settlement, Mackris signed a non-disclosure agreement, effectively buying her silence for nearly two decades until she spoke with The Daily Beast earlier this month and detailed the alleged harassment—including lewd, menacing telephone calls from O’Reilly. She said earlier this month that she chose to speak in potential violation of her NDA because “I may not get the past 17 years back, but there is one way I can retrieve my power from this storm of lies, loss, greed, and grief.”
O’Reilly’s lawyers said in a statement that the court “issued an order restraining Ms. Mackris from further violations of the Settlement Agreement with Mr. O’Reilly after learning of The Daily Beast interview with Ms. Mackris and its follow up pod-cast.”
The statement went on to say that “earlier, a federal court had determined the Settlement Agreement was valid and enforceable. Ms. Mackris cannot unilaterally decide that she no longer wants to honor its terms without consequences” and added that Disney, which is ABC’s parent company, “did the right thing by cancelling Ms. Mackris’ planned appearance on The View.”
In response to Mackris claims, O’Reilly’s lawyers wrote in a letter to The Daily Beast earlier this month that “Ms. Mackris issued a public statement in 2004 in which she stated that ‘there was no wrongdoing whatsoever by Mr. O’Reilly.’”
Mackris further discussed her ordeal and railed against the “terror” of forced non-disclosure agreements in an appearance on The Daily Beast’s The New Abnormal podcast earlier this week. “My act of breaking it is almost an act of self-defense. You know, it's like, no matter what [O’Reilly] tries to do to me, I’m going to be OK,” she said.
—Diana Falzone was an on-camera and digital reporter for FoxNews.com from 2012 to 2018. In May 2017, she filed a gender discrimination and disability lawsuit against the network and settled, and left the company in March 2018.
