One month before Megyn Kelly came under fire for defending blackface, the NBC News host opened up to Us Weekly exclusively about her plans for the future of Megyn Kelly Today.
“My focus is on my show, my team, my viewers and, separately, my family,” Kelly, 47, said during a sit-down interview with Us when asked whether she has ever considered leaving her morning show. “Those things keep me busy enough that I don’t have time to think about much beyond that.”
The journalist said that she and her executive producer “are in lockstep” with their vision for the show.
“The question for us is whether that content will resonate enough at 9 a.m. for the show to be considered a commercial success,” she told Us. “My own takeaway is, if that content doesn’t work at 9 a.m. and if all that works at 9 a.m. is much lighter fare, then I have a decision to make because I’m not going to do that.”
Kelly explained that she recently transitioned a portion of her Today hour into a panel format because “it allows us to be newsier” with the content.
“I had missed my connection to hard news,” the former Fox News anchor told Us. “That’s been fun, and it’s actually been doing really well. That’s definitely been helping our numbers.”
Kelly, whose Today hour debuted in September 2017, admitted that she and her team spent “a year working out the kinks, figuring out what works, what doesn’t work, what’s a misstep, what’s a forward step.” She said their next step is fine-tuning “those lessons.”
That said, the TV host insisted that quitting never crosses her mind. Instead, she aims to “find another way of reinventing myself and doing something that resonates with me, something that I’m good at, and something that still allows me to raise my own family.”
Just weeks after sitting down with Us, Kelly was criticized for saying on her show that it was considered “OK” to wear blackface on Halloween when she was younger. She later apologized in an email to fellow NBC staffers and during a monologue on air. NBC News confirmed to Us on Thursday, October 25, that Megyn Kelly Today “will be on tape” for the remainder of the week “given the circumstances.”
A source told Us, “Discussions of Megyn’s show ending have been going on for a moment. This is not a recent development. NBC was practically waiting for a reason to end this show.”
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With reporting by Brody Brown
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