The Tamron Hall show premiered Monday, with the journalist detailing the backstage drama surrounding her departure from Today.
“I go into work one day. I left fired. ‘Demoted’ I guess is what they called it. I called it fired,” Hall told the studio audience.
At the time, she was co-hosting Today’s Take, the third hour of Today with Al Roker and Willie Geist. NBC canceled the show in 2017 to make way for a new hour with Megyn Kelly after she left Fox News.
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On today's show @TamronHall shared what happened after shoe lost her last job… She really goes there! pic.twitter.com/5T5epZqP0J
— Tamron Hall Show (@TamronHallShow) September 9, 2019
Hall said she was snapped by photographers as she left NBC the day of her demotion. While she was impeccably dressed and smiled, she said she was miserable.
“It didn’t matter what I looked like on the outside. Inside, I was falling apart. I had worked since I was 14,” she recalled.
Hall praised Roker, Geist, and Savannah Guthrie, saying they were her “Today Show family who called me and rooted for me on this journey.”
Kelly left NBC in 2018, after making racially insensitive remarks about using blackface for Halloween costumes. She departed with the remainder of her $69 million contract.
Hall previously said she felt slighted when the network decided to give Kelly her own show.
“My whole life, if there was a job application, I was the one saying, ‘Put me in the room. I’m going to get that job,’” Hall told People magazine in May 2019. “So then to sit on the other side of the table and hard-sell yourself to keep your job? The last week I was on Today, I filled in for Savannah Guthrie, who’d gone on maternity leave. I filled in for Lester Holt all while I was doing my MSNBC show plus shooting Deadline Crime.”
She said she was putting in the work but not being fully recognized. Still things ultimately worked out for Hall.
Tamron Hall airs weekdays in national syndication.
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