TV host Tamron Hall grew emotional when she shared her fears about returning to TV after a two-year hiatus.
The former Today show host opened up at the 2019 Essence Festival on Sunday about the insecurities she felt after choosing to leave the popular NBC morning show in February 2017.
She is now gearing up to host her own syndicated talk show premiering in the Fall, which will be set up similar to the Oprah Winfrey Show and Phil Donahue Show, according to Variety.
But Hall said she told her mother she would only return to TV with certain conditions.
“I told my mother that if I couldn’t make y’all proud, I was not coming back to TV,” she told the crowd of Black women. “If I could not build a show that looked like you, that talks like us, that represents us, I was not coming back.”
“Now mind you, I didn’t have any money. I had a couple of credit cards and I had a dream that you would welcome me back,” she said, her voice breaking at this point.
But she laughed off that moment of vulnerability, admitting that “these mummy hormones” are causing her to “keep crying these eyelashes off.”
The time away from network TV has been a major transition for Hall. In that time, she married music executive Steven Greener and gave birth to her son, Moses.
Returning to host her own show after time away from her career was nerve-wracking For Hall; but, she told the crowd that she knew Black women would support her.
“I know that my family was not going to let me fail,” she said. “So when Disney and ABC Studios said, ‘we’re going to put you on nationally.’ I said, ‘Don’t worry because they got me’.”
We surely do.
The Tamron Hall Show will debut on Sept. 9 on ABC.