Bloomberg Talks · Sep 28, 2026 · 27m · 17m saved
With Bob Chapek, Former CEO of The Walt Disney Company, author of "Behind the Castle Walls"
Bob Chapek said the biggest miracle of his time as Disney's chief executive was not that he lost the job. It was that it took three years, and that the board fired him five months after extending his contract.
A month before that extension, he said, a board meeting told him the company had never been in better hands. He stayed silent for about four years afterward, and has now written a book.
"And that void was filled with a lot of rhetoric and fiction, so I figured I had to set the record straight."
Bob Chapek, former CEO of The Walt Disney Company, on Bloomberg Talks. He spent nearly 30 years at Disney, starting in home video marketing in 1993 and running home video, film distribution, consumer products and the theme parks before he became its seventh chief executive in February 2020.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 27 minutes of audio, 10 minutes of reading.
Here are the 12 moments that matter.
Key Takeaways
Disney's stock is largely unchanged since he left, and he blames the lack of a growth engine
The board extended his contract, then fired him five months later, after telling him the company had "never been in better hands"
He did not see a board member in person for 18 months after taking the job, because of COVID lockdowns
Chapek believes Bob Iger thought he could take the CEO job back at any time, through his relationships with board members
He says Disney erased him from the company's timeline, and staff were discouraged from staying in touch
The parks could earn high single-digit to low double-digit returns, while ESPN, the film studio and network TV are all challenged
1. Why He Wrote the Book
Chapek said he never imagined writing a book in his 30 years at Disney, let alone one whose last third covers his final three years.
Asked whether words such as "ousted" and "fired" are hard to hear, he said they still hurt.
"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." — Bob Chapek
He said he stayed quiet partly because of the terms of his departure, partly out of common sense, and partly because he wanted distance so the book would not read as emotional.
Half of the hurt is gone, he said
"It still stings a lot, but I put a percentage on everything, and I'd say maybe 50% of it is gone, and the other 50%, honestly, is tough to get over." — Bob Chapek
He said the book was for his legacy and for the history of the company.
