Allison Williams is now free from ESPN and now free to say whatever the hell she wants without repercussions.
Last week, the former ESPN college basketball and football reporter joined a small minority of workers who have quit or been fired from their jobs over a vaccine mandate. ESPN’s parent company, Disney, had announced a vaccine mandate over the summer with a deadline of this Friday, Oct. 22.
“I have been denied my request for accommodation by ESPN and the Walt Disney Company, and effective next week, I will be separated from the company,” she said in a video posted to Instagram on Friday.
During an interview with Megyn Kelly about her decision on SiriusXM — Kelly asked Williams about President Joe Biden stating vaccine order “isn’t about your freedom,” last month. Williams likened Biden to a dictator. “If we don’t have freedom over our own bodies…we aren’t free,” Williams said. “That was scary to me, that is something a dictator says. That is not something a leader of free people says.”
“I have never been so jarred by anything a president said,” Williams said while acknowledging we just spent four years with Donald Trump in office. “To hear the leader of the free world stand up and say, ‘this isn’t about your freedom, I thought ‘oh my god, it is ALWAYS about our freedom.’”
Williams shared on Twitter that she’d decided not to get a COVID-19 vaccine while she and her husband were trying to have a second child.
“Taking the vaccine at this time is not in my interest,” she wrote.
The CDC has urged people who are pregnant or might become pregnant to get vaccinated, saying there is currently no evidence showing COVID-19 vaccines cause fertility problems.
In the Instagram video, Williams spoke of her medical apprehensions about receiving the vaccine and added, “I am also so morally and ethically not aligned with this.”
“Ultimately, I cannot put a paycheck over principle, and I will not sacrifice something that I believe and hold so strongly to maintain a career,” she said in the video. “I’m going to pray things get better and that I can see you on the television set in some capacity in some stadium, covering some game soon.”
