It’s easy to assume that TV personalities are just that—on-screen personas who follow a meticulous script. But it takes little more than a glance at Sunny Hostin’s career to see that there’s a lot of lived experience that has influenced the opinions of this long-running co-host of ABC’s The View. And, no—no one is telling her what to say.
Depending on how you look at it, the spark that ignited Hostin’s impressive career was either jury duty or a simple, two-letter word: “No.”
“I’ve always thought that ‘no’ is the first answer on the road to ‘yes,’” Hostin says.
And she heard an awful lot of ‘no’ at the beginning of her career. She aspired to be a broadcast journalist like Barbara Walters or Diane Sawyer when she graduated from college, but she couldn’t get a job in the news business. Instead, she waitressed at Friday’s—“much to my parents’ chagrin.”
Eventually, she became a lawyer, inspired in part by serving as a juror. Since then, her career has taken quite a few unexpected turns. Among her many jobs, she’s been a federal prosecutor, a late-night news anchor, a bestselling author, producer, winemaker and actor.
And even now, as a recent empty nester in her 10th season as co-host of The View, Hostin feels, in many ways, like she’s just getting started.
Don’t Hesitate to Take Risks
Hostin pivoted from law to journalism—her original target—after having her first child. She knew that being a federal prosecutor would not offer her much free time with her son, so she started looking for other options and landed a gig filling in for Nancy Grace on Court TV. At the time, she thought that was as good as it would get.
After working with Anderson Cooper as a legal correspondent for the Trayvon Martin case, however, Hostin got an offer to be an overnight news anchor for ABC. Her workday started at 8 p.m., and her show aired at 2 a.m. and 5 a.m.
“I didn’t think it was going to be a great experience, but it was my first real Barbara Walters-type gig,” Hostin says.
She didn’t think that many people would be tuning in, but that’s when she got her biggest break yet. Whoopi Goldberg, moderator of The View and an “infamous insomniac,” saw Hostin’s show and then called her own executive producer, Bill Geddie, to tap her for an audition. When she arrived, Walters was there for the audition, and Bette Midler was a guest. Hostin says she felt like she was watching a tennis match, to the point that Geddie asked her, “Are you in the show, or are you watching the show?”
“Just all these people I’d seen on television,” Hostin says. “I still sort of feel that way, and it’s been nine years… and every day, it feels surreal.”
It was a huge risk to leave her “thriving” legal practice to work in television, especially as she had two young children at the time, Hostin says. But she’s glad she took it.
“I was doing very well, but there was that itch that I thought that I had more to do,” she says. “And I still think I have more to do.”
Continued Appreciation
Of all the things she’s done thus far, Hostin says The View continues to surprise her.
“Every juncture of my career has been the pinnacle of my career,” she says. “As a judicial law clerk, I was like, ‘It doesn’t get any better than this,’ and then I got into the honors program at the Justice Department and I was like, ‘This is it—it doesn’t get any better than something like this.’”
And each time, she’s risen higher. Among her most memorable moments on The View was a conversation with Sen. John McCain, when he thanked her for her service as a federal prosecutor, saying, “We can all serve in different ways.”
Hostin also had a special moment backstage with actor Chadwick Boseman, who knew at the time that he was dying of cancer but didn’t share it with anyone.
“I told him he just had such an old soul, and he told me, ‘I feel like I’ve lived a long life,’” Hostin says. “In retrospect, he knew he was dying when he said that to me. So I’ve had some life-altering experiences on this show.”
‘Leave It at the Table’
One of the biggest misconceptions about The View is that its cohosts don’t like each other, Hostin says, but in reality, they’re all friends. The secret to maintaining relationships with people—friends, family, colleagues—whose opinions make you want to scream?
“It only works if it’s founded upon respect, empathy and kindness,” Hostin says, adding that finding basic common ground, such as shared experiences as parents or spouses, is crucial to protecting those relationships. Whatever the arguments are, it’s important to “leave it at the table,” Hostin says, and not let them cloud your respect for someone in other settings.
“I couldn’t do this job if I took whatever happened yesterday [at work] to work this morning,” she says. “There are some times when some of my colleagues say things and I’m like, ‘That is not my lived experience—my lens is completely different, maybe because I am a Black woman, maybe because I am a Latina woman, maybe because I’m in my 50s and you’re in a different generation.… But I can respect that, and I can hear everyone out.”
The show is watched by millions of people around the world, so Hostin takes the weight of her opinions seriously. She says she works hard to share facts rather than leading with “I feel.”
“I’m of the Lester Holt school, where he said, kind of infamously… that journalists do cover both sides, but if one side is factually incorrect, you don’t treat them the same way,” Hostin says. “If you really listen to what I say on the show, I generally don’t say anything that isn’t supported by a valid source that any journalist would use.”
It’s Never Too Late to Try Something New
Recently, Hostin has ventured into a different side of TV with Sunny Hostin Productions, where she’s working to adapt books by authors of color. But that’s just one of the many things she’s working on.
Among the many other projects keeping her busy off-screen: cohost Joy Behar, who recently debuted an off-Broadway production called My First Ex-Husband, cast Hostin in a play, and she wants to do more acting in the future. She’s working on her next book, a science fiction novel about witches, and a producer has already expressed interest in turning it into a movie. She’s soon launching two new wines. And the first novel in her beach read trilogy, Summer on the Bluffs, is in the process of being turned into a TV series for Amazon Prime.
“I love beach reads, I love historical fiction, and I also like the getaway,” she says. “I think we kind of need escapism right now, and we’ve needed it for quite some time. I wanted to read an escapist novel that centered [on] women of different generations and women of color, and I couldn’t find anything like that. So, I wrote it.”
An Empty Nest Is a New Beginning
Even now, having interviewed thousands of high-profile guests, Hostin feels, in many ways, like she’s just getting started. At 56 with two college-aged kids, she’s newly empty nesting, which has kicked off a stage of life she never expected.
“We do not talk about that enough, because it’s a pretty hard transition,” she says, likening the emptying of the nest to the stages of grief. Some of her friends seem to be enjoying opportunities to travel the world, but she’s “not there yet.”
At the same time, she feels more creative than she ever has at any point in her career.
“I always prioritize my children, and now that they’re out of the house, I still prioritize them, but it’s given me more time to do more projects,” Hostin says. “Traditionally, women in their 50s were considered not only middle-aged but aging out of careers. But you really, all of a sudden, have quite a bit of time—and now you really feel like the sky’s the limit.”
Photo from ABC Photo Archive
