Don Lemon wanted free ride on Elon Musk’s rocket to host ‘first podcast in space’ as part of wild list of demands
He’s a real space cadet!
Don Lemon — who submitted a wish list that included demands for a free Cybertruck in contract talks with X before he was unceremoniously dumped last week — also wanted SpaceX boss Elon Musk to launch him into orbit for the first-ever extraterrestrial podcast, The Post has learned.
“First podcast in space to be hosted by Don (via SpaceX),” the bulleted line item reads.
The literally out-of-this-world ask was on a document Lemon’s agents at United Talent Agency sent to Musk’s social media site that also included demands for a $5 million advance on top of an $8 million base salary, equity in the company, and veto power over the site’s news content policies and its roster of creators, as The Post reported exclusively last week.
The document, which was reviewed by The Post, was sent last December — a month before Musk and Lemon announced their partnership for the fired CNN anchor to host a show on X.
Lemon’s representatives did not return calls for comment.
X executives were also taken aback when Lemon requested that a private jet ferry him and his partner to Las Vegas for a tech conference — with the company footing the bill for the plane as well as a stay at a suite in a swanky hotel on the Strip, sources close to the situation said.
Last week, Lemon’s reps adamantly denied that their client made those demands.
Jay Sures, vice chairman at UTA, told The Post: “This is absolute, complete utter nonsense without an iota of truth to it.”
Lemon’s spokesperson Allison Gollust also tried to shoot down the report.
“There is nothing in your list of demands that you claim Don made of X that is true. Literally nothing,” she said.
X declined to comment.
SpaceX — along with Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic — have charged millions of dollars to launch daring tourists to the edge of space. One seat on an early Blue Origin suborbital flight even went for $28 million.
A glance at SpaceX’s web site shows that a flight aboard its “ride share program” can cost anywhere from as low as $300,000. The cost rises in conjunction with the payload that will be coming onboard.
Musk fired Lemon last week — before his debut episode even aired — after taping what turned into a testy interview on March 8. Lemon grilled the tech mogul on his political views, his reported drug use and his content moderation policies.
Lemon posted the full interview with Musk online on Monday, though snippets of it were leaked last week after Musk ended discussions about a revenue-sharing sponsorship agreement that X had touted earlier this year.
Musk’s move prompted Lemon to accuse the mogul of reneging on his pledge to allow unfettered speech on X.
But Musk pulled the plug after he deemed Lemon to be “dull” and “underwhelming” — adding that he had no wish to indulge Lemon’s “approach” which was “basically just ‘CNN, but on social media.’”
