New York- Scandal-hit Bill O’Reilly’s accuser had a crush on the talk show host and voluntarily engaged in “intimate” phone talks with him, according to a former friend of the woman.
But at some point, the ex-pal said, O’Reilly’s relationship with Andrea Mackris went sour – and she vowed to take her boss down in a juicy tell-all book.
Restaurateur Matthew Paratore gave a sworn statement to O’Reilly’s lawyers, saying he thought he had “something they should know.”
At his North West restaurant on the upper West Side, Paratore told the Daily News that Mackris is not your typical sex-harassment victim.
“She loved the guy. She admired him,” said Paratore, 38. “She respected him.”
He said she confided in O’Reilly after she split with her fiancé in 2002.
“From one of those conversations grew a relationship where they would have more intimate talk over the phone,” he said. “From what she told me, I wouldn’t characterize it as phone sex. This was not harassment. It was very clear to me that this was their little banter back and forth. This was their game or something.”
Mackris, 33, an associate producer with “The O’Reilly Factor,” filed a lawsuit last week claiming O’Reilly sexually harassed her in phone-sex calls.
Mackris’ lawyer, Benedict Morelli, slammed Paratore’s claim as “garbage” and called him a “spurned potential lover.”
“He asked her out in October last year and she said no,” he said. “The only thing I’ve heard about this guy is when I asked Andrea if there was anybody she has disappointed like this, and his name came up. It’s garbage.”
In her lawsuit, Mackris claimed that O’Reilly’s harassment included numerous inappropriate conversations, including a suggestion that she should buy a vibrator.
The harassment escalated after she returned to Fox News in July following a stint working at CNN, she said.
O’Reilly also sued Mackris and her lawyer, claiming they attempted to extort $60 million to buy her silence.
Paratore suggested that Mackris may have been motivated to file suit because of her proposed book.
“He told us that Mackris confided in him that she wrote a book and the purpose of it was to take down Bill O’Reilly and Fox News,” said O’Reilly’s lawyer Ronald Green. “She spoke to a well-known publisher in January this year. She was told it had to have more impact, she had to do more to make the book more interesting and exciting.”
Green said he did not know which publisher she allegedly approached.
Morelli angrily dismissed talk of an anti-Fox book as “ridiculous.”
“Andrea never wrote a book, she never went to a publisher,” he said. “And what would a book have to have in it to bring down a company as big as Fox?
“This is ridiculous. They have got nothing and they are grasping at straws,” Morelli said. “They can find witnesses to say anything about anybody, but unless they have proof it’s worthless.”