Tamron Hall: From ‘NBC Door’ to ‘A New Beginning’ – Not Just a Host, But a Symbol of Truth and Dedication

Tamron Hall is momentarily distracted. We’re sitting on the 26th floor of the World Trade Center discussing her new talk show, Tamron Hall, when she begins staring out at the Financial District below. Hall likes to look for signs, I learn, and she’s spotted a new one, painted on a wall outside. “Everyone is different and everyone is the same,” it reads. Hall feels that, intrinsically. And she thinks this idea—that despite our differences we’re all similar—is why people were so fired up when she unceremoniously left her post hosting the third hour of the Today show in 2017. “I can go into your office and talk to seven people who have had similar moments,” Hall tells me. “They weren’t taken off Today, but they put 100 percent into something and the person who was only giving 40 percent said, ‘No, we don’t want you.’”

Audiences were outraged when Hall, the first black woman to coanchor the NBC morning show, left after 10 years. She says her departure had nothing to do with Megyn Kelly’s joining the show around the same time (“It was a decision I made for Tamron”). But fans still called out the network for letting her go. One tweeted, “I live for @tamronhall every single weekday morning. Are they insane over at the @TODAYshow?” Another vowed, “If Tamron Hall [is] gone, then I can’t watch the @TODAYshow anymore.”

But the outpouring of love didn’t manifest into the one thing Hall, 48, needed: cold, hard offers. Hall remembers her mother warning her, “If you think bringing your résumé that says ‘25 years of experience’ will open doors for you, it won’t.” Hall says she found this to be a reality—as were the unbalanced hiring practices she spent her career reporting on. “[Media] is still underrepresented as it relates to women and women of color,” she says. “So [no matter] how many accomplishments I have, it didn’t matter.”

“We need diversity in television, and it’s not just race. It’s geography, it’s different walks of life.”

But none of the scrutiny or rejection could stop Hall, who grew up wanting to become a news anchor, from fighting to get back on air. Hall barely remembers a time before journalism was her passion, and says she spent her childhood playing the role of interviewer to family members. When she saw Iola Johnson, the first black news anchor in Dallas, on TV as a kid, Hall felt she’d finally found an outlet for her incessant questioning. Johnson made television a reality for Hall, and nothing could get in her way of making it her reality too. So leaving NBC only meant it was a matter of when—not if—she’d make her return to TV.

By the summer of 2017, it seemed she’d found her golden ticket. Hall announced that she’d signed a television development deal with the Weinstein Company. Just three months before the New York Times published their bombshell report on Harvey Weinstein’s decades of alleged sexual misconduct. By fall, the show was yanked and people were talking. “I knew Harvey for maybe four months,” she says. “I said to myself—when I was receiving phone calls from people saying, ‘Oh, I heard that he’d done something’—Why is his stain on me? It was like daggers, daggers, daggers. And at some point I had to say, ‘These aren’t arrows I should be taking.’”

Walt Disney Television/Jeff Neira

So again she looked ahead. She dipped into her “emotional toolbox” and “used the hammer and other parts I didn’t know I’d have to implement.” That, most of all, meant not being afraid of not having a steady gig. This led to her taking a different approach to her work. She spent the next two years traveling the country on a tour, just talking to people at events like the Women’s Foundation for a Greater Memphis and the Essence Festival in New Orleans. Hall found that no matter where she was in the country, women were having a lot of the same conversations.

So Hall pitched a daytime show rooted in those conversations to Disney-ABC. They were in. Her self-titled talk show will be syndicated across the country and feature a mix of real women and celebrities. The format will vary from episode to episode, ranging from interviews to lifestyle segments, but Hall wants to give the traditional talk show structure an injection of 2019 culture. She says she’ll begin all conversations by asking guests about their relationships before diving into a round of real talk.

In many ways Tamron Hall will be the anti-Dr. Phil. Think no paternity tests but plenty of hormone testing. Or as Hall puts it, “If you go on [Dr. Phil], your relationship is already in trouble. It’s not fixable. For us, it’s having that authentic conversation you would have with your girlfriends. Like about fertility. I interviewed a woman who recently froze her eggs at 35 because she thought it was putting pressure on her relationships. That’s a major modern-woman decision. That’s our show.”

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Celebrities will also be prominently featured on Tamron Hall, but Hall plans to engage them on these issues. Her dream guest is Celine Dion—not to discuss her fashion or iconic career, but rather her fertility journey. “Celine’s a well-known person,” Hall explains, “but with the birth of her children, that was a woman who wanted to be a mother and did what it took to get there.”

“There’s no balance. I don’t know what that means.”

Fertility is top of mind for Hall, who had her first child, four-month-old Moses, this year. To conceive, she underwent in vitro fertilization after having unsuccessful fertility procedures in her 30s.

And while the past few months have been an embarrassment of riches (albeit hard-fought ones), Hall is now figuring out how to “have it all.” She employs a nanny (something she wishes more women in the public eye would be vocal about); she insists on a dedicated half hour of cuddles with her son at 6:45 each morning; her husband, music manager Steven Greener, begins his day a bit later so he can finish Moses’s morning care. Even with the help, it’s not an easy schedule. “There’s no balance. I don’t know what that means,” she says. “There are some days where I look at my son in his crib in the morning when it’s dark and I’m flying a 5-in-the-morning flight to go promote the show, and I start crying because it will be midnight when I get back and he’ll be asleep. So he went the whole day without seeing me. But that’s the reality of it.”

These issues—marriage, motherhood, and figuring out how to make it all work—are the types of conversations Hall has been spending her days unpacking with her team, all of whom she hand selected. Early on, Hall says, she went to a development meeting for the program and found herself in a room of all men. Hall put her foot down: She never wanted to be the only woman in the room again. “Daytime television is predominantly watched by women,” she explains. “[Men are] not representative of the viewership. We need diversity in television, and it’s not just race. It’s geography, it’s different walks of life.” All of which she took care to have reflected in her staff. Hall’s creative team is now 30 percent black women. Many of the senior staffers are mothers. Women fill out nearly all of the key roles.

Now, with Tamron Hall on air, Hall wants to give herself the opportunity to marvel at how far she’s come. ”I get emotional thinking about it. It’s been a hell of a journey,” she says. “People tell you to be proud of yourself. We tell our friends and our kids they should be proud. Yet when you actually are proud of yourself, you get shamed for that pride. With this show, whatever the outcome, I will be proud of myself.”