Suit alleges host has affair

The host and his wife refused to comment on the suit.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
A lawsuit teeming with tawdry details you definitely won't be seeing on the next "Maury" accuses talk-show host Maury Povich of cheating on his TV newswoman wife, Connie Chung, with an underling.
The bombshell legal filing claims Povich, 67, has been tangled in a "long time, intimate and sexual relationship" with 47-year-old producer Donna Ingber -- and calls the talk-show set a "Peyton Place" rife with porn and booze.
The reported affair "was common knowledge to all," and Ingber was known as "Maury's girl," claims the $100 million suit, filed Monday in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Bianca Nardi, a 28-year-old producer who has been with the show since 2000, slammed her bosses with the legal action -- charging she was subject to humiliating and exploitative treatment behind the scenes.
The suit charges "Maury" was a classic hostile work environment "where hostility, intimidation, humiliation, ridicule, sexual harassment, as well as alcohol use, was explicit, rampant, pervasive and was condoned."
Povich is not accused of any harassing behavior himself -- but the suit claims he, his production company and NBC should have known about the possible problems and stopped them.
Details
The most damaging details in the suit for Povich focus on his reported affair with Ingber, a married mother of 12-year-old twins who supposedly made drunken late-night phone calls to Nardi about her sex life with the talk-show host and other men, the suit alleges.
The accusations threatened to tarnish the golden couple image of Povich and Chung, who wed in 1984, have a 10-year-old son and live in luxury in the Dakota apartment building on the upper West Side of Manhattan.
Reached at home, Chung, 59, declined to comment Monday.
Povich was taping shows Monday at his studios, including a segment with transsexual socialite Amanda Lepore. He ducked the New York Daily News' attempts to get his comments on the lawsuit.
Ingber's husband, Jeffrey, told the Daily News that the allegations about his wife and Povich were lies.
"I think it's absurd," he said from their Philadelphia home. "He's been a gentleman. Absolutely not. Not even close."
Spokesman's stance
A spokesman for the show ridiculed the harassment claims in Nardi's lawsuit -- but refused to address the allegation that Povich was having an affair.
"We have done a complete and thorough investigation of her allegations of harassment and we are satisfied that there is no merit to them," the spokesman Gary Rosen. "We stand behind our experienced and dedicated staff fully."
Nardi is a blond graduate of Syracuse University who had bit parts in some small independent films. She comes from a politically prominent family in New Hampshire, but was last in the news when her mother, Robin Miller, died of a rare flesh-eating bacteria in Connecticut in 2003.
Now living in Fort Lee, N.J., Nardi still works for the show but is taking medical leave, her lawyer said.
In the suit, Nardi claims her boss, producer Paul Faulhaber, ordered her to wear short skirts and low-cut blouses, watch porn videos in the office, take off her shirt for a video crew, and wear a pushup bra so a video crew could shoot her breasts.