Former Disney CEO Bob Chapek said Monday he voiced concerns about then-Executive Chairman Bob Iger to the company’s board “weekly” during his brief tenure as head of the House of Mouse.
Chapek has remained tight-lipped about his firing from the media giant nearly four years ago, but opened up about his experience in a new tell-all memoir, “Behind the Castle Walls: My Thirty Years at the Happiest Place on Earth,” and in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
Once head of Disney’s theme park and experiences division, Chapek was tapped to take the helm of the company just weeks before the Covid pandemic shuttered movie theaters and amusement parks around the globe in 2020. As Chapek worked to navigate these challenges, Iger remained with the company to handle Disney’s content initiatives like Disney+.
However, Iger slowly began to reassert control, Chapek says. The ensuing power struggle was detailed in a CNBC report in 2023.
“When I started hearing about lunches that he had and dinners that he had where he was absolutely trashing me, and I’d hear it two, three times in the same week, the same bullet points, the same talking points, I was like, ‘I’ve got a problem,'” Chapek told CNBC.
He noted that when he brought concerns to the Disney board about Iger, he was told, “‘He’ll be gone in two years. It’s OK. That’s Bob being Bob.'”
But almost three years after being named CEO, Chapek was ousted and replaced by Iger, who returned to the post until March 2026.
“It would have been great if, like other CEOs, he acted as a steward of my new role,” Chapek said. “It would have been one thing if he was neutral, but to be actually working against me, actively, I thought was just unbelievable.”
