EXCLUSIVE: Matt Lauer Suffers Emotional Breakdown On The 'TODAY' Show Set
Aug. 3 2016, Updated 6:07 p.m. ET
Hard-hitting journalist and veteran host of NBC's TODAY show, Matt Lauer is known for never letting his emotions show. But during a reading last week with star of E!'s Hollywood Medium, Tyler Henry, RadarOnline.com exclusively learned that the 58-year-old "completely lost it!"
According to a production insider who was present when the segment — which aired Tuesday — was shot, "Matt was very skeptical going into this and he was almost making a joke of it. He did believe in psychics and did not expect what happened to happen." But all that changed after the sit-down session.
Lauer said of their exchange: “Tyler started by me giving him a pocket knife that I brought."
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Henry – who has given pop culture a new perspective on life after death – immediately had someone else coming through.
"I first want to start with this man who is insisting to connect. This doesn't come through as a grandfather but he comes through in a fatherly essence. I am definitely getting a reference to a progressive decline in health," Henry told Lauer, adding, "There is a feeling of appreciation of where he was when he died. I refuse to die surrounded by doctors or die in a hospital, withering away."
Fighting back tears, Lauer replied, "Tyler was talking about my father who passed away at 1997. At his request he spent the last few weeks of his life at home in hospice care."
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Although that could have been just a coincidence, the rest of the reading was not.
"Your father is showing me a reference to coins. A coin collection," said Henry, to which Lauer responded, "I have a couple of silver dollars from him but not a lot."
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"He is saying that there was three but that now there are two. How many coins do you have, Matt?"
"I think I have two. Yes, I have two," Lauer added.
When teasing the segment on this morning's TODAY, co-host Savannah Guthrie asked Lauer how he did not cry during the reading.
Lauer answered, "I am not the person who is going to let it go at that moment. But I did cry when I got home."
However, the eyewitness source told RadarOnline.com that he didn't wait until then to let loose.
Said the eyewitness, "Matt was in tears as soon as the cameras stopped rolling and he actually had the crew stop once or twice during the reading to compose himself!"
Watch Lauer's dramatic breakdown in the video below to see what else his father had to say.
Season 2 of Hollywood Medium with Tyler Henry premieres Wednesday, August 10 on E!