Julie Chen (who doesn’t use “Moonves” in her social media posts) will be returning as host of Big Brother despite the decision by the CBS board to fire her husband Les Moonves without pay.
She announced the news on Twitter today, writing: “So excited to be back on this stage! Who else is ready for the second season of #BBCeleb?! Double Tap if you’re counting down to the premiere on Monday January 21!”
Chen was seen standing on the Big Brother stage in a black dress and leggings with her hands thrown over her head in a celebratory fashion in the accompanying image.
So excited to be back on this stage ?? who else is ready for the second season of #BBCeleb?! RT if you’re counting down to the premiere on Monday January 21! ???? pic.twitter.com/FKgzaZpysb
— Julie Chen (@JulieChen) January 10, 2019
The second season of Celebrity Big Brother will premiere on Monday, January 21 with a two-hour season premiere.
Like the first season, the show will air multiple nights a week until the show’s two-hour season finale on Wednesday, February 13th.
New episodes of “Celebrity Big Brother” will air every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.
Rumors are that former professional figure skater Tonya Harding, and former Trump spokesman Anthony Scaramucci, will be among the celebrity houseguests.
Chen had previously said she planned to return to Big Brother, but this was before the CBS board announced her husband would not be compensated, two months after he was fired for his alleged misconduct.
CBS hired two law firms to look into the allegations being made about the 69-year-old executive, who was named president of the company in 1995 and in 2016 also became the chairman.
In the wake of the scandal, Chen also left her spot as host of the network’s daytime show The Talk while defending her husband.
Moonves, who is worth an estimated $800 million, took home $69 million in 2017 for his work at the company.
The disgraced executive was set to walk away with a $120 million golden parachute if an investigation into his allegations of sexual misconduct found that there were not grounds to terminate him for cause.
Moonves would have also received a additional $65 million from vesting of long-term incentive rewards had he received the $120 million as well, but will also not get any of that money.
That investigation found multiple reasons to fire him with cause however, according to the network.
In a statement released last month, CBS said that Moonves’ ‘willful and material misfeasance, violation of Company policies and breach of his employment contract, as well as his willful failure to cooperate fully with the Company’s investigation’ justified the board’s decision to oust the president and chairman earlier this year.
There are few specifics at this time, but it was revealed that Moonves had given investigators’ his son Charlie’s iPad instead of his own when asked to hand over the tablet.
Julie Chen with her husband Les Moonves, former CEO of CBS.
The New York Times also revealed that investigators met with Moonves four times and found him to be ‘evasive and untruthful at times and to have deliberately lied about and minimized the extent of his sexual misconduct.’
In the report, investigators found that Moonves ‘received oral sex from at least four CBS employees.’
Investigators noted that the instances were ‘transactional and improper to the extent that there was no hint of any relationship, romance, or reciprocity.’
Though the lawyers were not able to speak directly with all of the women, they determined that ‘such a pattern arguably constitutes willful misfeasance and violation of the company’s sexual harassment policy’.
The lawyers also wrote in their findings that they had received ‘multiple reports about a network employee who was “on call” to perform oral sex’ on Moonves.
Moonves reportedly admitted to receiving oral sex from the woman but claimed it was ‘consensual’. Moonves has denied having any non-consensual sexual relationships.
The disgraced CBS boss’ lawyer said that his client had ‘never put or kept someone on the payroll for the purpose of sex’.
It was also discovered over the course of the investigation that Moonves had destroyed evidence and misled investigators in an attempt to save his reputation and his severance package.
According to the report, Moonves’ marriage to Julie Chen in 2004 appears to have caused the alleged sexual misconduct to stop.
It is also revealed that in 2017, Gil Schwartz, the longtime head of communications for CBS, drafted a resignation letter for Moonves after learning one of his accusers had spoken with Vanity Fair.
There has been speculation that Chen will leave CBS immediately following the season finale of Big Brother.
Julie Chen remains one of the best broadcasters of modern times.
Before she took the advice of Moonves and headed to the entertainment division, she was the highly qualified and credible anchor of the CBS Morning News.
She is one of the best interviewers on television.
But her time at CBS, so tightly linked to her husband the past two decades, is probably coming to an end.