It’s been more than two years since Megyn Kelly left Fox News and scored a coveted (and lucrative) spot on NBC’s Today Show — and now that the dust has truly settled, the longtime NBC anchor ousted in order to hire Kelly is sharing her feelings. As reported by Page Six, Tamron Hall insists she bears “no ill will” towards Kelly. Despite rumors of bad blood between the two in the wake of Hall’s exit, Hall’s trouble was rooted in the network… not Kelly.
It all boils down to merit and loyalty. “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.’ So then to sit on the other side of the table and try to 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. So I’m putting in all the work, and then I’m told, ‘It doesn’t matter that you came in every time we called. We want something else.’ I wasn’t that ‘something else,’” Hall explained in a new interview with People Magazine.
Although Kelly apparently was what the network was looking for (she was fired later that year for defending blackface), Hall is adamant the blame isn’t her replacement’s to bear. “Let me be clear, I have no ill will toward Megyn,” she said. “They made her an offer she couldn’t refuse. And they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
View this post on Instagram
To be clear, the time Hall has had to reflect on the situation likely led to the peace she feels over Kelly coming into the picture. When she initially “lost her spot” on Today’s third hour, though, she felt like she “didn’t have anything to wake up to.” But that thought gave way to “an opportunity to look at my life.”
With that introspection, she began to look to the future. “My story is not one I could’ve ever expected. Two and a half years ago when I walked out of that NBC building, I was in a fog, not knowing that so many of us lose things we think are important, and we have no idea that something better is right there,” she told People, adding, “I’m from the South, and there’s a saying: ‘It’s not a setback; it’s a setup for something else.’ That loss set me up for, yes, a dream job but also my baby, my husband, my family. I just couldn’t see it coming.”
That dream job? Hall’s own syndicated talk show, set to premiere on ABC September 9.
Leave a Comment