Radio Host Goes All In On Bill O'Reilly

Terry Gross may seem to have a mild-mannered demeanor based on her soothing NPR voice, but the longtime radio personality, who stopped by the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon Thursday, can throw shade with the best of them.

Gross, who has hosted NPR’s “Fresh Air” for upwards of 30 years, got candid about her process preparing for interviews(Fallon showed a photo of her dog-eared copy of Bruce Springsteen’s memoir) and the times when her interviews have fallen flat. One incident in particular still stands out in her mind.

“Oh yeah, that happens and people have walked out on me too,” Gross told Fallon. “Most famously, Bill O’Reilly walked out on me. I asked him a few challenging questions about whether he used the microphone to settle scores or to get even with people. Before I was even done with the question, he accused me of throwing every defamation in the book at him and then made a little speech about, ‘This is NPR, I know what this is. I know what you’re doing. Thirty minutes of defamation.'”

Gross didn’t seem perturbed by O’Reilly’s outburst, however. She then recalled how their interaction ended in a truly mic-drop moment. “And then he said, ‘If you think that’s fair, Terry, you should get out of this business.’ And I’m thinking, ‘One of us still has a program.'” (After 20-plus years on the network, O’Reilly was ousted from Fox News earlier this year following sexual harassment scandals.)