Richard Gere earned a scolding after he presented his middle finger to Today host Savannah Guthrie live on air Wednesday.
Suffice it to say, Guthrie was shocked.
“You just did an obscene gesture on this family morning show,” the wide-eyed NBC host told Gere, as she tried to obscure his hand with a stack of papers. “I’m bleeping you.”
The offensive move was out of character for the usually refined Pretty Woman star. But in his defense, he explained that he was just finishing off the clip the morning show had just played from his upcoming spy thriller series, The Agency.
Apparently, the preview had cut right before Gere’s character flips the bird.
“You didn’t show but that’s what I did in the piece,” the actor said. “That’s what the clip was.”
“That’s what the clip was, but we cut that part out,” Guthrie retorted. “But then you did it live.”
“I could see that, but it didn’t make any sense without that,” Gere fired back.
As Guthrie noted, it’s the second time in as many days that a celebrity guest on Today has astounded a host with obscenity.
“You know, Cher was on here doing an F-bomb yesterday, so I don’t know what’s happening,” Guthrie exclaimed to Gere, while both laughed.
The pop legend had dropped the expletive as she was sharing with Today’s viewers actress Lucille Ball’s advice on how to deal with her split from her romantic and professional partner, Sonny Bono, in 1975.
Cher had warned host Hoda Kotb that the answer was inappropriate, but Kotb assured her that they were “going to bleep it.”
So Cher revealed Ball’s take: “F--- him. You’re the one with the talent.”
The only problem? The broadcast didn’t have its seven-second delay on, so the expletive went out unfiltered to the show’s viewers.
Kotb—and the rest of the staff in the studio, who could be heard erupting in laughter—immediately realized the mistake, and the host apologized to the program’s audience.
Cher, meanwhile, maintained it wasn’t her fault, saying simply: “Well, you said I could.”
