Celebrity News

CNN honchos have heated exchange at swanky media party

Media bigwigs were gobsmacked Thursday night when CNN chief Jeff Zucker and the cable network’s veteran publicist Allison Gollust were seen in a heated exchange — in the middle of a party full of media power players.

At the Hollywood Reporter’s 35 Most Powerful People in NY Media party — where attendees at new Seagram Building eatery the Pool included Harvey Weinstein, Anna Wintour and others — Zucker and Gollust suddenly began speaking intensely and making anguished hand gestures before Gollust strode purposefully away into the crowd.

Sources told Page Six the kerfuffle wasn’t a fight between the pair but had to do with business that spilled over from the office. “It was something they were dealing with at CNN all day,” said a source, adding “it wasn’t an argument.” Gollust joined CNN in 2013 after leaving NBC, where she and Zucker had worked together for 15 years.

“It looked like she was reprimanding her husband or something,” laughed one baffled rival exec of the exchange.

Across the room, NBC News’ Megyn Kelly chatted briefly and posed for a photo with “Today” host Savannah Guthrie, but spent most of the party powwowing with her former Fox News colleagues, especially Sean Hannity. But Kelly and her new boss, NBC News chairman Andy Lack, later stepped away from the glitzy power-packed room to have a long, serious-looking discussion in a hallway before returning to the fête.

Matthew Belloni — named THR’s editorial director in February when Janice Min exited — presided over the bash, where guests included on-air talent Lester Holt, Don Lemon, Brian Stelter, Charlie Rose, Dr. Mehmet Oz and Chuck Scarborough, CBS News’ Jeff Fager and David Rhodes, ABC News’ Tom Cibrowski, NBC News’ Janelle Rodriguez, MSNBC’s Phil Griffin, Fox News’ Bill Shine and Jack Abernethy, The Post’s CEO and publisher Jesse Angelo, the New Yorker Editor-in-Chief David Remnick and Arianna Huffington. We hear that Andy Cohen — who made the list — instead headed to visit a friend in LA who was ill.