Sage Steele (Photo by Grant Halverson/Getty Images)
Sage Steele is free from ESPN and able to state whatever comes to her mind these days.

Former ESPN host Sage Steele made social media go crazy this week when she revealed that the network instructed her to follow a “script” when conducting a pre-taped interview with President Biden back in 2021.

“That was an interesting experience in its own right because it was so structured,” Steele said in a recent interview with Fox News Digital. “And I was told, ‘You will say every word that we write out, you will not deviate from the script and go.’”

Steele’s interview with the President in March 2021 was focused on sports making a transition back to being normal during the COVID-19 pandemic and the hesitation by some athletes to receive the vaccine as it was first being rolled out at the time.

Steel told Fox News that the interview was essentially “scripted” by ESPN executives.

“To the word. Every single question was scripted, gone over dozens of times by many executives … editors and executives,” she said. “It was very much, ‘This is what you will ask. This is how you will say it. No follow-ups, no follow-ups. Next.’”

“I knew this was a lot bigger than just the wonderful editors I worked with,” she continued. “This went up to the fourth floor, as we said, where all the bosses, the top executives, the decision makers are, the president of our company, the CEO, where they all worked.”

After she revealed that much about the interview, she received some backlash from a former co-worker.

Former ESPN broadcaster Keith Olbermann would soon take to X and take a major swipe at Steele while responding to a headline from Awful Announcing. In the midst of his rant, he also called Steele the ‘dumbest person he’s ever worked with in sports and news.’

“Of COURSE it was scripted. If it hadn’t have been @sagesteele – the dumbest person I’ve ever worked with in sports or news – couldn’t have gotten through it,” Olbermann wrote.

Olbermann then pointed to one part of Sage Steel’s admission in which she stated “every single question was scripted, gone over dozens of times by many editors and executives.”

“I mean Jesus, if this happened to you, you’d just assume it WASN’T being done to protect the network from you humiliating it – and yourself?” Olbermann wrote.

Sage Steele Left ESPN in August 2023 after nearly 16 years with the network, saying at the time she wanted to exercise her First Amendment rights “more freely.”

Keith Olbermann departed from ESPN for a third time in 2020.

Sage Steele Filed Lawsuit Against ESPN In 2022

Sage Steele (Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Cisco Systems, Inc.)
Former longtime ESPN SportsCenter anchor Sage Steele sued ESPN and Disney in 2022, alleging the company retaliated against her for comments she made on Jay Cutler’s podcast regarding the COVID-19 vaccine and other political and social topics.

Steele said in the lawsuit she was protected by the First Amendment.

She eventually settled that lawsuit in 2023.