MINNEAPOLIS — Garrison Keillor is not apologizing.
Unlike other famous men who have quickly expressed regret after being accused of sexual harassment, the former host of “A Prairie Home Companion” defended his conduct and remains adamant that he was wronged by Minnesota Public Radio when it ended their nearly 50-year relationship.
As part of his first interview since then, Keillor shared hundreds of emails involving him and a female employee of the show whose allegations of inappropriate behavior led to MPR’s action.
“I wish we would lie down on the sand and listen to the waves and the gulls and if we did, I would kiss you. As many times as I could,” he wrote to her in 2014. In emails during the next few months, their banter turned sexual, including “language that your newspaper cannot print,” he said Friday.
But he said he was not trying to seduce the woman, and backed off when she complained about his conduct in 2015.
“She wrote to me and said, ‘I cherish your friendship but I think we need to draw boundaries.’ And boy, I couldn’t establish boundaries fast enough,” Keillor said Friday. “I leapt backward about 15 feet. … You know, I am from Minnesota, and you don’t have to tell me twice. When you say, ‘Take your romantic writing and send it to somebody else,’ I hear you.”
The female staffer’s attorney, Frances Baillon, did not dispute the accuracy of the emails but contested the latter point, saying her client had warned Keillor and “Prairie Home” managers in 2011 that his advances were unwelcome.
In a December 2011 email, the woman told a co-worker: “I have sent an e-mail to GK just now. He will understand, upon reading it, that I want nothing to do with him apart from a working friendship. … I feel sad and nervous.”
Four additional reports were made by October 2015, Baillon said. On that last occasion, she said, Keillor “seemed upset” when the woman rejected his offer to visit her at home, explaining that “she did not want a sexual relationship with him.”
Send questions/comments to the editors.
