Tamron Hall Talks How She Turned Defeat Into Triumph And Season Four Of Her Talk Show Is The ‘Golden Hour’

Tamron Hall’s mantra that she often says to describe herself is “I was a success the day I was born.” However, her life and career trajectory are a bit of a paradox. Hall was born to a 19-year-old single mother in Luling, Texas; her grandfather had only a second-grade education and could not read. As a student, she brought home C’s and C-minuses. By all means, Hall could have succumbed to a negative outcome. Instead, she earned a Bachelor of the Arts degree in Broadcast Journalism from Temple University. According to her bio, Hall became a highly revered award-winning journalist. She received the 2015 Edward R. Murrow Award for Reporting for her segment on domestic violence for the “Today Show’s” Shine A Light series. In October 2010, Hall won an Emmy for Outstanding Live Coverage as a correspondent for the NBC News special covering “The Inauguration of Barack Obama.” She has worked for top-tier broadcast networks, and series such as Deadline, NBC News, MSNBC, and NBC’s the Today Show. As a fixture of NBC’s morning show, her departure from the infotainment program created shockwaves within the industry, leaving many weighing if her career had reached its nadir.

Holding onto the idea that her life is a success despite apparent obstacles, Hall took over the reins of her career. She is the executive producer and host of the “Tamron Hall Show,” which was renewed for a fifth season and has garnered her two Daytime Emmys for ‘Outstanding Informative Talk Show Host.’ Her topical and entertaining platform has generated a loyal audience that ranges across all demographics and ranks in the number two spot among the top ten market averages in syndicated daytime television. Hall’s show has beat “Ellen,” “Wendy Williams,” “Kelly Clarkson,” “The Real,” “Drew Barrymore,” “Jerry Springer,” “Maury,” and others. While she does make her achievements look effortless, her rise to the top was not without challenges. Hall relies on her new roles as wife and mother. Her compassionate and informative approach to subject matters has endeared her audiences, that see her as trustworthy and authentic. Now that the Ellen show ended on May 26, 2022, and Wendy Williams has exited the television landscape, Hall is now the “veteran,” and only Black television host to executive produce her own show. When asked what made her go into broadcast journalism, she pauses to reflect, “I don’t know if I decided or if it was meant for me to do this.” She recalls as a child watching local news every night in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, with her stepfather, who impressed on her that she could like Iola Johnson, the first Black anchor.

“This was a decision made after seeing what was possible. I was always a talker. My nickname was ‘not necessarily,’ I was always contrary. Johnny Carson was the person on TV I most identified with; he was doing interviews. I mean, he’s working the room,” she recalls. As a young child growing up in Luling, Texas, “I was the kid who was always brokering the peace between the other kids,” she says, adding, “If my cousins were in trouble with my Paw-Paw, I was the one negotiating that they didn’t get a whooping. I was always the dialogue person and the facilitator of conversation even at a very young age, but in full form, it was when I saw Iola Johnson, and my father said, ‘that could be me.'”

The recipe for her show’s success is hard to pinpoint, but Hall believes that when she entered the market, people were aware of her falling from grace story, which she says they have never seen before. “By no decision of my own, losing this high profile job and as a woman, and as a Black woman at 48-years old, finding a way to rebound, I feel resonated with people,” she considers. Her fans related to the storyline of her life, and she believes that when she was pitching and forming her television show, it allowed her to experience a great perspective. “At the end of the day, we all have our favorite celebrities, but we all have a story, which was our first tagline. We all have a story. Let’s talk about it,” she expounds that she relied on her journalism career spanning 30 years to push her transparency around the challenges surrounding her IVF treatments and profession, which ignited the fire for her show. “I’m in meetings talking about what this show is [and] everyone’s asking me [about] my favorite celebrities that I want to interview, and I said, ‘I don’t have a favorite celebrity. I have a feeling, and that feeling is when someone sits down and is ready to take off their layers. They’re ready to take off their masks, saying, let’s talk about it,” she reveals. “I got chills when Halle Berry was on our show in the third season. Of course, we’ve seen Halle do interviews for what, 25 years, if not longer, and when she was talking about her latest film [Bruised], and how she had to go in and pitch this film, and it was a struggle, and I said, ‘but you’re Halle Berry’ and she said ‘but I’m still a Black woman.’ Her perspective was that [of] a Black woman in Hollywood, but that said, I believe that statement can resonate with anyone.” Hall says. “That means no matter how high you are, there is a struggle. There’s a challenge. There is a boundary and a roadblock, and how do you get over that roadblock? Even when you’re Halle Berry?”

Overcoming roadblocks is a sentiment Hall knows all too well. She still feels the pressure of being a Black woman as a daytime TV host who has to constantly prove herself beyond being labeled a Black show because she books a diverse lineup that includes Black, White, Asian, Latino, and Indigenous guests. She did not anticipate that tying her authenticity to her background and culture would place her in a box with networks and advertisers. They considered her show only for a particular demographic when her entire goal was to reach everyone regardless of race, gender, or socio-economic status. Resisting and conquering this archaic thought process was no easy feat when Hall noticed booking agents only offering her show certain celebrities.

“So we are only pitched Black actors, but Black actors and Black stars who are only known to the Black community. What I mean by that is if there’s an A-list entertainer who happens to be Black, they are then pitched to another show. Someone who is only known within or only believed to be known within a diverse audience, that person is pitched to us. So we had to fight back on that a lot,” Hall says. She reasons even though she is a Black woman with a talk show, she is giving her perspective from her life. “So if we are a Black show, is the other show a White show? And why are they being pitched, diverse guests?”

Although she recognized the hypocrisy and the challenge it presented, she did not view labeling her show as a Black show as pejorative but instead approached that space with confidence and joy.

“At the end of the day, when you put on a product that’s about heart, that’s about your story, that’s about being authentic, you will get the audience, and as a result, we have an audience split down the middle: Black, people of color, White, and socio-economic range.” Hall said she wasn’t upset, but as a person who grew up watching her favorite shows on television as a latchkey kid, she was taken aback by the notion of the divide ever present in the television industry. “It’s a talk show and it’s hosted by a Black woman.”

However, some advertiser buyers and executives still view the support of the Black community and the Black dollar as less valuable.

“We approach the show from the standpoint of a southern Black woman who lives in New York; that’s my journey. I can talk to anybody and share an experience with anyone. We say celebrate Black Business Month, but that doesn’t mean only tell your Black friends about my company. We’re celebrating what this business owner likely had to overcome to have a seat at the table. So I believe; unfortunately, some advertisers then weaponize that and maybe unknowingly say, this is a Black business, and it’s only for a Black audience,” Hall says. She quotes a line from the hit movie “Dirty Dancing,” ‘Nobody puts baby in the corner,’ to illustrate that others should not fence Black business owners into one thing, preventing them from acquiring widespread success.

“I feel that with our show in the early seasons, we had to push back behind the scenes at this notion that the Black dollar is not valuable. I can be a Black host with a loyal following of people who may identify with me culturally, but also have a loyal following for people who don’t,” Hall says. “We’ve been able to do that, and that is why we’re at season four and going into season five [because] I can be true to myself.”

Bringing up Oprah Winfrey as a prime example of someone who did not fit into the prerequisite categories when she broke into the daytime television terrain and shattered the proverbial glass ceiling, it is curious that Hall continues to deal with the same discriminatory talking points. “There are conversations we have today about women business owners that you would think we wouldn’t be having. With the pandemic, women’s businesses are still languishing and struggling to recover. Black, Latin, and Asian-owned businesses are still struggling to come back because the cards are often stacked against you when you go in to get financing. When you go in to get investors, you’re already jumping so many hurdles,” she says. “Should business owners still be dealing with that today? Absolutely not. Should women disproportionately be given higher interest rates? I have friends to this day who get intimidated to go into car dealerships; it’s 2023. These aren’t unique challenges to me or my show, and yes, the baton, certainly a big one was passed down to myself and many others who follow right. That said, new challenges arise every day and sadly when it comes to business and whose dollar is seen as valuable.”

Hall’s battle of making room for herself in the competitive daytime talk show field drives her to share the stories of other women who have also bypassed discrimination in their careers and business. “We’ve had female-run construction companies who were told they would never make it out of Texas. The owner is Latin, but she broke the ceiling in the construction world. So we’re always talking about this. The core of our show is everybody’s got a story. Let’s talk about it, and that often includes someone doubting you can do it or the odds stacked against you that you won’t be able to, and we do,” Hall says.

Hall is employing several astute moves in expanding her brand by collaborating with Court TV, hosting an original true crime series, “Someone They Knew with Tamron Hall,” and working on documentaries exploring the mental health crisis of teenagers. She recently became a published author; her first novel sets off a thrilling crime series titled “As The Wicked Watch.”

“I’ve been working on a documentary about the mental health crisis with teenagers. So many parents have contacted me, and we’ve done shows on the topic, who could not get their children into care, who could not find facilities that [could] accommodate between the ages of 10 and 17 depending on where they live, for example, in rural areas,” she explains. “There is a conversation that we are not having, and usually it’s because of privacy, but I have spoken with parents who are now ready to talk about the crisis of suicide and mental health. I recently spoke with a parent whose child was on so many pills when she went to a new doctor; he couldn’t believe the parent was opening the bag. For personal reasons and from what I’ve seen professionally, this is in front of my mind.”

Hall is also breaking new ground for her new book series when she pitched the book because the publishing world told her they had not seen a Black protagonist, Jordan Manning, written by a Black female journalist in the novel spaces, and she is the first.

“Having been the first at the “Today Show” and then having major publishing houses say even in the true crime world you’re creating something unique, again, fuels my fire,” she says.

Hall used her experiences of when she was a reporter covering crime and the stories she saw and spoke about as the foundation for the series.

“So Jordan Manning, this character, Michael Jordan, Peyton Manning, melded together came to me watching ESPN one night, and it popped in my head. I wanted to use Jordan Manning as the protagonist who poked her nose into places she wasn’t supposed to go but always had the intention of helping, and that’s what she is in the first book. She follows the disappearance of a young Black girl and discovers that this may not be an isolated case,” she says.

For the second book in the series, due out next summer, Jordan follows the disappearance of a mother who is White. “As a journalist, we don’t look at the background of the person. We follow the story that is our job and what she does. She’s doing her job.” Hall recently finished the second book in the series and is looking to develop her books into a television show or to have the series streamed on a service. For the upcoming talk show season, she has dubbed this season the golden hour because “the hour that we spend together is the golden hour where we can laugh, learn, and get inspired together.” Hall intends for her viewers to feel unique, beautiful, and amazed at all their accomplishments during this time. The Tamron Hall Show returns Tuesday, September 6, 2022.