Tamron Hall Gets Candid About Her Talk Show, Robin Roberts Friendship & What’s Next

Tamron Hall has made history as her self-titled program is Disney’s second-longest running syndicated talk show. She recently celebrated another milestone when she hit 1,000 episodes.  Since premiering in 2019, that equated to more than 80,000 studio audience members affectionately called “Tam Fam” members and 8,000 guests. On top of that, 45 emerging designers have enjoyed the platform to show their looks on the Up-and-Coming Designers Runway. Not to mention 13 Daytime Emmy nominations and two wins for Hall as Outstanding Informational Talk Show. 

Robin Roberts of Good Morning America stopped by to celebrate during the 1,000th episode on March 31 in an emotional scene. Roberts has been among a long list of famous faces who has joined Hall for often deep conversations with everyone from Mary J. Blige and Lucy Hale to Deion Sanders and Chelsea Clinton. Then there was that time Hall met up with the “Queen of Daytime” herself Oprah Winfrey during Oprah’s 2020 Vision Tour. 

Now in the midst of Season 6 with an already Season 7 renewal, Hall has been riding on rating highs. For the first African-American woman to co-anchor the The Today Show has come a long way, it has been quite the journey. We caught up with the Hall to reflect on her recent accomplishment and what’s to come.  

Tamron Hall and Robin Roberts (Disney/Paula Lobo)

What did this 1,000th show milestone mean to you? 

Tamron Hall: My father was in the military and mother was a teacher. I was built on the put your head down, do the work culture. That can be phenomenal, but also put you in a space where you are not absorbing what you’ve accomplished. Thankfully, my team, Robin Roberts, I’ve had so many incredible people around me who pulled me aside to remind me what this means. It’s not that I’m not grateful. Of course I am. Any chance I get to pop out of that door and do this show, the gratitude is overwhelming. It’s processing the accomplishments sometimes. That’s a lesson for us all. To be honest with you, Robin pulled me to the side and grabbed my hand to tell me how proud she was of me. She kept repeating that this was a big deal. With every word, it penetrated my mind to understand the work matters. But it matters to all of us to savor the accomplishment. I’m still in this moment of glee. 

Does it make you nostalgic? 

I was looking back at photos, and you could see every tooth of my mouth. I’m smiling so much. It’s wonderful. I have enjoyed all 1,000 shows. I have more gray hairs to show for it, which is why we did the show on gorgeous grays recently. It was more about these people living their best, amazing, social media influencer lives. It was about these sexy independent people who were finally ready to embrace their gray hair, which is a storyline that was fun to do. 

You mentioned Robin Roberts. It seems she has been this mentor and confidant for you. 

She has been a friend. So often in this world, people fall into this mentor or confidant, but it’s great to have a friend. A friend rooting for you. I have a few others called the “Tam Fam.” She represents them in so many ways. These people who root for the show, root for me, but see themselves in the show. For her to say, “I feel safe enough to talk with you about this,” That’s the general energy of the show. People feel that in this chaos of the world, and I’m not talking politics, but general. Humans came on this earth, and it wasn’t an easy thing. The chaos of life, added from social media, to know you can turn on this show for an hour and feel a connection of laughter or fun or inspiration or learning. 

We just did an exclusive interview with Pinky Cole. Pinky Cole started a multi-million dollar vegan food chain with great fanfare the year we launched our show. In fact, she appeared in Season 1 before the pandemic. She came back on the show, had to restructure her business. She was a young entrepreneur with no business background. She lost her business and had to fight against the odds to buy it back. I share that story because that is the spirit of our show. It’s showing true talk shows. This was what talk shows started out as, whether it was Dinah Shore or Merv Griffin or Phil Donahue. Oprah being on Mount Rushmore. It’s about life. It’s a life masterclass. 

As you’re developing the show and creating the identity, what have been some of the biggest challenges you’ve had to overcome? 

That is a phenomenal question. I think the biggest challenge was recognizing that most of us consume our TV on our phone and in a streaming format. The days of 20 million, 30 million people watching daytime talk shows were long gone before I entered the space, but certainly gone now. What we have done, for example, is have a segment called Social Media Debates. I got myself online and saw people debating bugs in our strawberries. That sounds silly and something you may see on a morning show, but sure enough people were debating it. These were heated debates. I thought let’s take the comment section online and build an hour show around some of these hotly debated topics. This one was a social media debates food edition. 

We went through and found all these trendy topics on social media, but we brought in the ones who posted them to debate them. It wasn’t a novel idea. We’ve seen it before, but it has really put us in a space of finding what’s on social media and not just calling it a hot topic or here’s what’s trending. We’re bringing the people behind these posts, and our audience then will have their sides. It’s the human version of the comment section. I feel doing things like that really allow us to bring in what you’re talking about and see on your phone, iPad, computer, where your friends are at 3 a.m., if they are like my friends, sending you clips and posts. You’d be surprised how many people who have found large audiences on social media have never been on linear TV. It’s still a prize. We’ve been able to find that. No, there are not 30 million people watching a daytime show. But being on a daytime show and linear TV is a prize, even for Gen Z. We end up bringing in so many guests who have millions of views, but have never been on TV. That has been our weapon. 

Tamron Hall

For me, I’m a big wrestling fan, and you’ve brought on a good amount of wrestling stars over the years including recently with Carmella (Leah Van Dale). I think they fit your description within the daytime talk realm. 

That’s exactly it! It’s bringing in WWE stars that people were not bringing in, who have millions of followers. I actually had Saraya recently, who talked about her book. She was supposed to be in the studio, but was unable to fly in due to technical issues. She joined us via Zoom. So many people ask me if I love WWE. I mean a little bit, but I love their fans. I love the wrestlers. They all have great stories, back stories. It’s phenomenal television that, for whatever reason, some people weren’t welcome to the party. 

You’re known for your daytime exclusives. Were there one or two that you’d say made people think, “Hey, this Tamron Hall show is here to stay and one we have to pay attention to.” 

Wow, that’s a great question. To be honest with you, it was hard in the beginning. Nobody knew what the show was, even though I said it was a talk show as if that was this strange being from another planet. I would have to say it was Tyler Perry. Season 1, he came on our show pre-pandemic. I think he came on with such an infectious enthusiasm about the show that it became infectious. So, it wasn’t even the project necessarily, which was phenomenal because it had Cicely Tyson, Phylicia Rashad, these all-stars [for A Fall from Grace]. 

It was the enthusiasm. I’ve been in the field of reporting for over 30 years. It comes down to a feeling. I think when I’ve gone to cover things around the world, I would always leave with how a particular person made me feel. These weren’t world-famous people. Whether it was covering a tornado in Texas right before I moved to Chicago to report. I watched people literally pick up the pieces for their neighbors, and say, “We will be here tomorrow.” You leave with this feeling of resilience. It wasn’t just Tyler Perry the celebrity, but this infectious energy around this show. This feeling. I believe the buyers felt that and the audience did. I think some people felt the unstoppable resilience of the show. 

What’s on deck for the rest of the season you’re excited about? 

We have a huge daytime exclusive with Kelsey Grammer. His memoir is coming out. He has not talked a lot about the murder of his sister. His memoir is laying his soul bare, and he is trusting us with the daytime exclusive with his memoir. Of course, his career is legendary. There are so many things he is working on. He has a couple of films coming out. It’s a full hour with Kelsey Grammer. I’m really honored he decided to come on the show. He is someone I’ve wanted to talk with for such a long time. Both of our lives were impacted in a similar way and different in others. He is coming on to talk about his memoir. We’re getting ready for that. We’re having our Mother’s Day extravaganza, which we do every year. Deborah Cox is exclusively performing and serenading. We bring in moms from across the country. I’m a late party mom, having my son at age 48. We say mother figures and moms. That’s aunts, grandmas, babysitters, anyone who is nurturing children. The spirit of our show is bringing in as many people as possible. 

I remember early on in my career wanting to do Mother’s Day shows, but feeling invisible. Even though my nephew and nieces every year send me a thank you for being a bonus mom card. We wanted everyone to feel that energy. That’s been the spirit for six seasons of our Mother’s Day show. A love letter to whoever has nurtured a child. We have a big party for that. We have our annual “Cookout” special. Again, a show born out of social media. The question being who would you invite to the cookout? I thought it would be a fun show. We started it last year. We do our annual Potato Salad Showdown. We pick people from across the country, and I have to pick. I never knew there were so many versions of potato salad. It’s a fun show. We have our Father’s Day show, and we just taped the daytime exclusive with Tina Knowles. Our new studio is up and running. It’s beautiful. It captures the spirit of the show. Now we’re moving into lucky seven in September. 

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What are your hopes for Season 7? 

That luck continues to shine on us. I don’t mean that lightly. It’s number seven. Every day on the show is one of joy, gratitude, but it’s been lucky too. We did a whole season from the basement of my home. I don’t run from luck. I’ll be lucky any day. I am the luckiest girl in TV. 

Lucky maybe, but also the product of hard work from you and your team to make the show a success. 

Absolutely. Thank you. People don’t realize. We tape about 170 shows a season. The season starts in September and wraps in May. We have about 180 people each season working on this, and that doesn’t count the people we bring in for big special shows like our big week of wishes or even our Mother’s Day show. It could top about 200 different people who work on this show. We’re all in this together. I think as long as we have that feeling, it just continues to radiate. I’m a TV kid. I could tell you my lineup from the day I was a seven-year-old latchkey kid to now that I’m 54 years old I love my shows. I love that people see us as a staple as I saw Happy Days growing up. 

Tamron Hall, Weekdays, Syndication (Check Local Listings)