Former Disney CEO Bob Chapek Talks His Time at Disney

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

Carol Massar (0:07)

Bob Chapek started at the Walt Disney Company in 1993 He spent nearly 30 years there from director of home video marketing to lead home video, film distribution, consumer products and theme parks, and eventually Tim, CEO.

Tim Stenovec (0:19)

He took over as CEO of Disney. That was back in February of 2020, as the world would soon shut down because of COVID. And in June, 2022, Disney's board unanimously voted to extend his contract for three years. That November, though, he was out months after the contract extension and less than three years after being named CEO.

Carol Massar (0:37)

He's written about all of it, his time as CEO, his tenure at the Walt Disney Company. We welcome Bob Chapek. He's former CEO of Disney here in studio. His new book out tomorrow, Behind the Castle Walls, My 30 Years of the Happiest Place on Earth. Good to have you here. Congratulations on the book.

Bob Chapek (0:53)

Thank you very much. Nice to be here.

Carol Massar (0:54)

Does it feel like we should say congratulations? How do you think about this book?

Bob Chapek (0:58)

I never imagined in any of my 30 years that I would write a book, let alone a book that, at least the back third of the book, tracking my final three years. I see my achievement as being named the seventh CEO of the Disney Company, a huge achievement, but it certainly didn't end the way that I thought it should.

Carol Massar (1:18)

Well, having said that, is it hard to hear ousted or fired or let go next to your name in conjunction with that?

Bob Chapek (1:25)

They're trigger words. Every one of those is trigger words, and I think I've spent the majority of the last four years trying to essentially heal from the impact of those words. But that's part of why I had to write this book. I really remained silent for the first three, four years, and that void was filled with a lot of rhetoric and fiction. So I figured I had to set the record straight.

Tim Stenovec (1:49)

Did you remain silent because you had to, because your contract was extended by three years, and part of the terms of that were you couldn't tell your story?

Bob Chapek (1:57)

That's partially the reason. Part of it was just good common sense. The other thing was I didn't want whatever I wrote to be filled with emotion.

I wanted it to be objective and from a distance, and I thought with time comes a bit of distance. So it's a little bit of both.

Tim Stenovec (2:17)

Did it feel like you were able to write this removed from it? Because it does seem like reading this, it seems like this still stings a lot.

Bob Chapek (2:25)

It still stings a lot, but I put a percentage on everything, and I'd say maybe 50 percent of it is gone, and the other 50 percent, honestly, is tough to get over. I'm not sure that this book's going to serve that purpose, but I did feel it was important for my legacy and the history of the company, to get some truth-telling into it.

Carol Massar (2:47)

We want to get into your becoming CEO and what happened, but you also spent some time taking us back in time, your history.

Always important, I feel like, for anybody's story, you talk about your family, Hammond, Indiana, being a runner, you talk about your summer jobs, you talk about the smokestacks that you grew up, you really painted a picture. You also talk about maggots, which is an incredible story that kind of freaked me out, but it's there. What do you want people to know about your background, your formative years, and why was that so important for everybody to understand your roots?

Bob Chapek (3:20)

I think the most important headline, if you will, is that I am the most unlikely person to be sitting here or in the CEO seat of the Walt Disney Company that you could absolutely imagine. I am the American dream in terms of how this happened. Hammond, Indiana is right next to Gary, East Chicago, where I was born, East Chicago, filled with oil refineries and steel mills.

Far more people decided to go into a trade than ever went to college, let alone went to college, got a graduate degree, spent 30 years at Disney and climbed to the CEO role. So I am the odd man out in terms of unlikeliness of being here.

Carol Massar (4:01)

All right. So there's a Florida and Disney connection when you were a kid too. You went there, you loved it, you loved Florida, it was probably painting a picture of what life could be.