By Tamron Hall won't hear my first question until someone on her makeup and hair team turns down the music blasting from her kitchen. As someone who has been interviewing people for 30 years, she gets it — she wants to make sure I can focus and get exactly what I need.
Moments before I settle on Tamron's grey L-shaped couch to discuss the upcoming debut of her brand-new talk show, Tamron Hall, I watch the acclaimed journalist fly down the stairs of her New York City townhouse. She's wearing a loose white shift dress and holding three different flowy dresses. She is calm, but clearly rushed, trying to finish getting ready for what will be a four-hour-long photoshoot in her home on a Monday afternoon. After holding up the hangers one by one and asking the photographers for their opinions, she lands on a navy polka dot number. Everyone agrees it will look the best on camera.
But she doesn't change into her chosen gown right away, nor does she let her glam team finish their work. Instead, as test shots of her staircase are snapped, Tamron offers me a bottle of San Pellegrino and motions me to follow her into the living room — a modest yet elegant white-walled space adorned with two framed photos, one of Stevie Wonder and one of Dizzy Gillespie. "It's a gift I gave my husband," she tells me, pointing to the portrait of the "Superstition" singer.
She tosses a pillow printed with a photo of The Supremes to the side, cozies up across from me, and pats the couch cushion to get her black-and-white Chihuahua, May Luv, to jump up on her lap. The music is barely audible now and she's stroking the back of her pup. She leans in and smiles — now, she's ready to dish on her "comeback."
"It is one of the most exciting things in my life currently, and perhaps in my 48 years," she says as a giant smile spreads across her face. "I never imagined this. Never. It's surreal, it's like being on a magic carpet and you're just floating."
It's an expression she's used in interviews before. Still, it's a fitting metaphor for the whirlwind that has become her life over the past two years. Since saying goodbye to her weekday gig at the Today show in February of 2017, Tamron has gotten married to music manager Steven Greener, given birth to her son, Moses, and committed to hosting her own daytime talk show, which will premiere on September 9.
Tamron's fans have been waiting for her return to television, wondering what the beloved journalist would do next — a question that Tamron wanted to take charge of answering for herself. More specifically, she needed to know "what was a 'next step' that would really mean something to me?"
The latter question has been the litmus test for every career move she's made so far — from accepting a position as a general assignment reporter at WFLD in Chicago to hosting Investigation Discovery's Deadline: Crime with Tamron Hall after her sister, Renate, was murdered in 2004.
"It [Deadline] gave me such a connection to people again," she explains as May Luv scurries away into the kitchen. "Every weekend, as tough as the topics were and as difficult as the days were talking to the people who lost loved ones, it was just ... it filled my soul. I'm sitting there talking to a person about a real part of their story."
She looks at me straight on: "There's nothing like looking in someone's eyes, and they trust you with their story."
Her love of reporting and exchanging smiles with Today, NewsNation, Dateline, and Bear Grylls fans (that one episode where she ate squirrel really got people talking) led her to the idea of hosting a traditional daytime talk show — one that welcomes "serious woman conversations on anything" but that also allows her to "laugh the next day and do fashion." It would be a project where Tamron, a self-proclaimed TV junkie, could take cues from icons Mike Douglas, Oprah Winfrey, and Phil Donahue, but also use her own 25 years of television experience to bring something new to the table.
"I watched Ellen [DeGeneres] rebuild her career from a sitcom star, to, as you say, 'the fish that saved her life' as Dory [in Finding Nemo], to somebody we love to watch every day ... in some ways, this is kind of that."
Yet in other ways, this isn't. Tamron is kicking off her talk show in what has been widely labeled a "unique time" in America – an ambivalent phrase often used when talking about President Donald Trump's last three years in office. Tamron, who displays a photo of herself with former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama on her mantel, believes that we are, indeed, "living in a unique time." But she really doesn't like to leave it at that.
"If you're telling your children this is the worst this country has ever seen, you're doing a disservice to your children," she said, paraphrasing a sentiment Reverend William J. Barber II, pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina, once expressed. Growing up in the '70s, just years after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and civil rights activists Martin Luther King Jr. and Medgar Evers, Tamron notes that politics is life — and there's no magic hatch to escape it.
So, no, her show won't be "an escape" from it all. Tamron won't shy away from any topic and vows to meet people where they are — and where everyone is, is right in the middle of it.
"When people talk about it now and are [like], 'Would you ever?' it's like 'Have you ever watched Phil Donahue, Oprah Winfrey, Mike Douglas?' I point to television history to say, please Google any talk show lineup. It's not an elimination of anything."
It'll be interesting to see how her open-to-all approach compares to Kelly Clarkson's, who is also launching a talk show on the same day Tamron Hall premieres. But the thought of a simultaneous daytime talk show launch doesn't appear to faze Tamron one bit — in fact, she makes it clear that she doesn't view Kelly as her competition. The way she sees it, there's plenty of room at the table for more talk shows.
"There's not a head to head. Anyone who would write, 'oh there's a battle' is simply looking for a headline," she declares. "Kelly Clarkson will have a phenomenal show and I'm not just saying that, I'm saying that because I'm a fan of hers on American Idol, and she's a fun-loving person. Her show is going to be different from mine, but we're still talking."
But how exactly will Tamron's program be different? For this question, she leans forward and asks me to name one daytime show off the top of my head that focuses on relationships. Okay, she knows Dr. Phil does, but that's a "unique space" given his background. But who else is talking about relationships in a real way?
"We can have a segment on any given day in the culture of what you and I would be talking about with our friends ... You guys got married? Oh, y'all broke up? What are the tips? Multi-million dollar companies are built on love, so let's talk about it."
Ironically, talking about her own love life isn't something Tamron was doing much of these past few years. It wasn't until March 4, 2019, when Tamron posted an Instagram of herself flaunting a baby bump and casually threw into her caption, "My husband Steven and I" that many people even realized the acclaimed journalist had gotten married.
"It's proof you can keep things private," she laughs.
It was a deliberate decision to keep their relationship under wraps these past two years, though it wasn't necessarily a huge secret — after all, she did mention that she had a boyfriend who worked in the "entertainment" industry in February of 2017. Tamron knew Steven for years before their friendship turned into a relationship. Just three weeks after declaring their romance though, they moved in together and the rest is history. According to Tamron, Steven likens their dynamic to Dolly Parton and Carl Dean's, one where "the husband" flies under the radar.
"For him, he wants my show to make it, but he wants our marriage to work and he knows part of that is maintaining this foundation and him being comfortable with who he is and not pushed into someone he isn't."
Their bond, Tamron says, is rooted in a promise they made to each other on their first vacation together in Anguilla, while sitting on the floor of their hotel room, picking at room service. Right then and there, as the rain fell outside, they vowed to "never turn on each other" and to "always be on each other's side," no matter what kind of craziness was thrown their way. It's a covenant that Tamron says Steven has kept to this day. It helps them, even when she doesn't have time to see him or when she walks in and doesn't say "hello" right away. There's something there without interruption.
"We're an interracial couple, we're both older parents, he's from the Bronx, I'm from Texas, that alone is a divide," she pauses for a chuckle before transitioning back to a formal tone. "We knew we wanted to prepare ourselves for what this exciting journey would bring."
That exciting journey now involves baby Moses, who occasionally can be heard fussing on a nearby baby monitor. Tamron acknowledges the faint noise, but stays focused on talking about her 4-month-old son.
The road that led to Moses was undoubtedly tough on Tamron. After trying to conceive in her 30s and undergoing IVF she "didn't think" having a baby was in the cards. Given that her pregnancy was considered high risk, she was hesitant to tell her fans that she was pregnant and waited until she was 32 weeks along to share the news.
"I said to my doctor, 'How much do I tell?' and he said, 'You don't owe anybody your story.' And I said 'Cancer survivors tell their stories,' and he said, 'That's a choice.'"
Through the process, she learned a valuable lesson about controlling her own narrative. "I decided ultimately to talk about it because I felt like I didn't have to whip out my medical records, but to say to someone this wasn't easy, and this is what happened and it wasn't easy many times, but this is what came to be in this little life."
Moses, like this talk show opportunity, is a strong reminder to Tamron of how unpredictable life can be. Two and a half years ago, Tamron was in a thick haze. She was hit with the news that Fox's Megyn Kelly was getting her own show in the third-hour slot on Today, a spot that Tamron was dominating with Al Roker. This was after 10 years of Tamron dedicating her life to NBC, filling in for Savannah Guthrie when she was out on maternity leave and Lester Holt on NBC Nightly News. From Tamron's perspective, the network wanted "something else" and, well, she wasn't it.
And with that conclusion, Tamron confidently left NBC's headquarters in her black patent leather boots and a black-and-white jacket, never to look back. Behind the brave face though, her mind was racing.
"On the outside, it looked like it was all together. 'Look at her, she's walking out, her head up.' My head is never going to be bowed, but I had to pray not to be broken," Tamron explains.
With hindsight as her luxury, she realizes now though that it was all pointing her in a new direction — the right one.
"I don't think I've ever said this out loud, but every 'no' that I received in my life, and there have been many, it's made sense at some point in time," Tamron reflects. "Even things I prayed to get and 'Oh my gosh, I want that job,' and I didn't get it, I look back and I say, 'Whew, thank goodness I didn't get that.'"
It's tempting to start the clock at the Today show and start rewinding from there, she tells me. But that's not how she chooses to view her life.
"We are not the biggest job we've landed. We are not, even with motherhood, I love my son ... [but] even he is not the total sum of my journey ... I'm not Tamron from the Today show. I'm Tamron."
As I wrap up the interview, Tamron asks one more time if I have everything I need. When I ask for a photo, Tamron politely tells me she'll be right back and races toward her kitchen to ask her stylist to comb out her curls. I follow her and maneuver slowly around her kitchen island to get out of her and her team's way.
It's there that I notice a large chalkboard on the wall across from me with a longhorn skull plastered to it (presumably, a nod to her Texas heritage). On it are scribbled "Moses's 10 Commandments," including "watch mama's show," "kiss papa before he leaves," and "FaceTime granny every day." Before I can finish reading all 10, she tells me she's ready to pose. We take the picture.
"Do you like it? There's nothing worse than getting a photo and realizing you hate it."
Again, Tamron gets it.
