Bob Chapek opens up about feeling “Let Down” and that Bob Iger and Disney “attempted to erase him” in a new interview with Variety.

Variety Interview with Bob Chapek

In this new interview, Bob Chapek discusses many of the topics he covers in his book, Behind the Castle Walls: My Thirty Years at the Happiest Place on Earth, set to be released on September 29, 2026. These topics include Chapek’s feud with and views of Bob Iger, former Disney CEO, his 30 years with the Walt Disney Company, and the “real reason” he was fired as Disney’s chief executive.

Variety points out that Chapek mentioned Iger 121 times over the course of the 272-page book.

A repeated theme throughout Chapek’s book and in recent interviews he has done is Iger’s unwillingness to give up the CEO role and how it led to Chapek being fired in 2022, and how it was not deserved.

In this interview with Variety, when asked about this, Chapek answered, “I don’t know if I can say that I made no mistakes during the time, but nothing that would warrant the action that the board took. In other words, no one is infallible.”

Chapek also claimed in the interview that Iger undermined him because he was intent on coming back into the CEO role at The Walt Disney Company.

He was also asked when the last time he had any communication with Iger, and his response was that he had not had any communication since he left the company in 2022, but he did run into Iger at the Sun Valley business-titan conference in Idaho in July 2022.

Chapek was asked if he considered taking legal action against Disney for the way he was fired from his role as CEO. To which Chapek answered, “No,” and said that he “just [doesn’t] want to go there.”

Chapek was also questioned about some of the criticisms of his time as Disney’s chief executive, such as his lack of handling the entertainment aspect of the company, price hikes at the parks, and the accusations that we backtracked on the Florida “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

When asked specifically what he thought the biggest misconceptions about his time as CEO were, he said:

“I think that somewhere in the mix between the Florida “Don’t Say Gay” controversy [over legislation to prohibit discussion about gender and sexual identity in state schools from kindergarten through third grade], the “Black Widow”-Scarlett Johansson controversy, and pointing to one quarter’s performance in the market. I think those are the things that tend to be brought up most often.”

In response to the guest being upset about price increases in the parks, Chapek said, “So there’s just a lot of push-pulls there. Hard to make everybody completely happy at all times.”

When it came to Chapek being picked as CEO, in the interview, he said he believed he was chosen because he wasn’t “tooting [his] own horn” and he had the accomplishments behind him to support his promotion, which he discussed in his book.

He was also questioned if he sees himself going back to the parks in any way. And his response:

“I feel let down. I feel, you know, you go into Disneyland, you go into Disney World, you go into It’s a Small World, and you buy in to the magic of Disney. And then you go through what I went through the last four years, and it’s kind of head scratcher. “

“The company made a decision to remove the sign at Castaway Cay [Disney’s private island in the Bahamas] commemorating my getting the board to rebuild three new ships [which said “Bob Chapek, Master Ship Builder”]. Was that necessary? Probably not. Was that spiteful? Yeah. The company’s timeline has been edited since I left to remove me in my time as CEO.”

“…more than that, it’s actually they’ve attempted to erase me. So I’m sorry if that doesn’t comport with the idea of [visiting Disney’s theme parks], but it doesn’t.”

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The post Bob Chapek Accuses Disney of Trying to ‘Erase’ Him After Bob Iger ‘Let Him Down’ in New Interview appeared first on WDW News Today.