Tamron Hall denied allegations she unceremoniously fired twenty staffers on The Tamron Hall Show this week. The host was accused of insensitivity for posting casually on Instagram after the staffers were dismissed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
She posted an IGTV video where she recounted what happened.
“I know there’s so much going on right now, big things and important things on all of our hearts, but I have to get this off my chest,” she began.
“That story that I did not pay 20 people and fired them and left them hanging is a lie,” she said.
“We didn’t fire 20 people. In fact, our season was supposed to wrap June 5. I fought to have the extension of the season to June 25,” she continued.
She added that while many creatives industry-wide were being furloughed due to the pandemic’s impacts, her team remained employed through the end date for the original season and the additional 20 days.
“My creative team was paid through the pandemic and through the extension because I wanted to keep pushing and keep putting out stories that matter to you. To cry together to laugh together to talk all of those things, that’s what I wanted to do, and my new executive producer, Candi Carter, fought to help me get there,” she said.
Hall said choices were made after the current season and the extension to improve the show. Several former staffers from The Oprah Winfrey Show were hired to work on the next season.
“And like any other show, like any other product, people make changes and we did—after the season had wrapped. Not during, not while,” she clarified. “So this notion that I ran off securing bags, it is not true. It is absolutely not and the notion that I’ve abandoned people, it’s not,” she said.
Hall then released an e-mail she sent to the staff in April after one employee tried to lead what she called a “mutiny,” praising them for their hard work and asking for anyone experiencing discontent to contact her openly or anonymously.
“But I have a right, and every person who runs a company, or has anything that is yours, you have a right to make it better,” she concluded.