Mending fences. Howard Stern moved on from his feud with David Letterman, and now he is opening up about what was behind their spat.
“I was just a young man full of rage and I was angry. I was angry with you, that you were on television, that you had an audience. There was no rhyme or reason to it,” Stern told Letterman during the Thursday, May 31, episode of My Next Guest Needs No Introduction. “I could not love anyone. I couldn’t respect anyone. I just thought this was who I was.”
The radio personality and the 71-year-old comedian were longtime friends before their feud began. Stern began bashing Letterman and his wife, Regina Lasko, which led to a falling out between the pair. “Words had no meaning to me. Words didn’t hurt,” the Howard Stern Show host, 64, explained. “Of course, they hurt me if somebody says something bad, but as far as I was concerned, ‘Oh, everything’s a joke. Words don’t mean anything.’”
Therapy ultimately led Stern to apologize and reconcile with Letterman and himself. The America’s Got Talent alum agreed with the host that he didn’t have much self-esteem before. “And I think just really a lack of self-examination,” he said. “I think through psychotherapy I started to fall in love with life a little bit. I started to appreciate what was good.”
He continued: “And one of those things was my relationship with you — that I could appreciate what you had done for me. I had betrayed your trust and I was ashamed. Here, the reality was I loved you and I really felt strongly about you.”
The good in his life also includes wife Beth: “I couldn’t have been in a relationship with Beth until I’d opened up. I wouldn’t have been a good husband. I didn’t want to screw it up again.”
The season finale of My Next Guest Needs No Introduction is now streaming on Netflix.
