Oh, that silly note? Steve Harvey joked about the controversial memo that he sent to his staff while promoting his new daytime syndicated show at a TCA panel in L.A. on Thursday, August 3.
Naturally, the comedian, 60, was asked if he would be writing a similar email to his new staff.
“I learned two things from that email: No. 1 I can’t write, and No. 2 I should never write,” he told the audience. “I was OK until I saw it on CNN and then I knew I was in a lot of trouble. It’s not a big deal to me. I’m not a mean-spirited guy. I’m a congenial guy.”
Harvey said that he wrote the memo a year before it made headlines. He claims that a staffer leaked it when they weren’t offered a job on his upcoming project.
He added: “I thought it was cute. You all did not.”
As previously reported, Harvey faced backlash in April when a now-viral memo that he sent to his Steve Harvey daytime show staffers surfaced. Some of the rules included not to approach him without an appointment and to not come into his dressing room without an invite.
Harvey explained why he wrote the note during an interview with Entertainment Tonight. “I could not find a way to walk from the stage to my dressing room, to sit in my makeup chair, to walk from my dressing room to the stage or to just sit and have lunch without somebody just walking in. I’ve always had a policy where, you know, you can come and talk to me — so many people are great around here, but some of them just started taking advantage of it,” he said in May. “In hindsight, I probably should’ve handled it a little bit differently.”