Tamron Hall has denied going “rogue” in her interview with former “Vanderpump Rules” star Stassi Schroeder.
Schroeder was fired from the show for reporting Black co-star Faith Stowers to the police for a crime she did not commit in 2018. The ex-reality TV star admitted she “was a Karen” during a tell-all interview with Hall, which took place last Thursday.
The host of “The Tamron Hall Show” has now addressed claims that she ambushed Schroeder during their exchange.
“The other day I was told that there was a report that Stassi felt ‘unprepared’ and that it was ‘awkward.’ Even that I had gone rogue – whatever that means,” said Hall, referring to an Us Weekly report in which a source claimed that Schroeder “felt like she was put on the spot.”
Speaking during Tuesday’s episode of her show, Hall went on: “Let me just be open because I’m expecting everybody who’s participating in this show today, I want them to be open, so I have to do the same. It’s why I wanted this show to be honest with you.”
Continuing, “So I’m going to take you behind the scenes of TV. Now, I don’t tell people the specific questions I’m going to ask them. How they answer, that’s up to them. But the topic and everything that we discussed, Stassi knew. She knew the subject matter. She knew what I was going to ask her. Not the questions.”
The presenter also claimed that Schroeder’s team requested that Schroeder’s past controversial comments on the #MeToo movement not be discussed during the interview.
In 2017, Schroeder released an episode of her now-cancelled “Straight Up With Stassi” podcast titled, “Are we on a male witch hunt?”, which criticized women who came forward during the #MeToo movement.
“It hit me to my gut that I didn’t ask her,” said Hall. “Given that she was five months pregnant, the issue of race was hard enough for her and for me and it was a lot to unpack, including that Nazi comment, so I said we were not going to go down that road but we would have this difficult conversation that we all should have to provide a better platform for our children.”
During the interview with Hall, Schroeder, who is pregnant with her first child, said she doesn’t plan on returning to reality TV anytime soon.
“That ship has sailed,” she admitted. “And my life feels very different right now, I think when something like this happens and you get pregnant on top of it, you take inventory of your life and you think what is going to be the best for my future child and I think getting drunk and starting conflict and misbehaving on a reality show isn’t my journey anymore.”
Hall further acknowledged the situation with Bevy Smith of SiriusXM and Radio Andy’s “Bevelations”.
“I realize that it’s not personal,” Hall said. “I didn’t take it as personal. I, I saw it as someone who is fighting for jobs, you know, podcasts book deal, she lost it all. And the priority I felt of the interview for her was to try to get back on the platforms that she had, for me, the priority and the intention was to talk about the decisions she made. Did she fully understand the ramifications of it? You know this is not just a reality show. This is real life. We talked about Breonna Taylor, you know, we don’t know what would have happened if police had gone to Faith Stowers’ home, obviously, I hope that would not have resulted in such a horrific situation incident as it did when we had it. But you just don’t know how someone’s going to react to that.”
“I just wanted to unpack it. And for her, I felt the priority was okay, I need to say, I’m sorry, and I need to move on, but you can’t move on that quickly,” she continued. “I actually thought was fascinating. She said I’m going to a diversity coach. And then I started to ask her about that because how many of us have heard of an individual, companies hire diversity coaches. I found it fascinating. And I laughed because it, you know, just like you think, cause it sounds so crazy. But then I went through this because maybe I’m just thinking out of the box here, maybe this, you know, the school systems have failed so many people.”
“Maybe folks do need to hire diversity coaches individually because what we do know is school systems have erased so much of women’s history and history of women of colour,” she suggested.
