Sunny Hostin. Amy Sussman/Getty Images
Sunny Hostin has a not-so-bright recollection of her time as a contributor for Fox News.
The lawyer and television personality, 55, has made a name for herself as a fixture at The View’s roundtable since 2016, but prior to that, she cut her teeth on the right-leaning cable news network.
“Fox was unlike any place I had ever worked before and unlike any place I have worked since,” Hostin said on the “Behind the Table” podcast on Tuesday, February 20. “That is because it felt very cult-like.”
Coming off professional opportunities with HLN and CNN, Sunny said she was not prepared for the culture shift.
“I had a journalism degree,” she told podcast host and The View executive producer Brian Teta. “I thought, ‘This is going to be awesome.’”
Hostin quickly learned she was in for a rude awakening, especially when she noticed “whiteboards on every floor” dictating the network’s agenda for the given day.
“What they were doing at that time, and this is just my experience,” Sunny explained, “is there was almost a mandate that would come from the top about what topics would be discussed on every show.”
She continued, “No. 1 was like, ‘Obama sucks.’ No. 2 was like, ‘Obama was not born in this country.’”
Hostin further explained it was her job to “push back” on the network’s narratives, which eventually led to her pitching her own segment called “Is It Legal?,” which Hostin said “Fox took credit for and kept.”
She soon found herself going toe-to-toe with Megyn Kelly on The O’Reilly Factor, hosted by Bill O’Reilly, which Hostin found to be an illuminating experience.
“[Megyn] was fine and it was great and we would talk and this and that,” Hostin noted. “When that red light came on, she became a completely different person. A very telegenic person, very aggressive. Assertive.”
While Hostin was usually able to handle Kelly’s television persona, she admitted there was a particular instance when things became too much.
“It caught me off guard only one time,” Hostin recalled. “I only needed to experience that once. She took up all the air time, she took up all the air in the room.”
Hostin also insisted that she was not interested in playing the network’s games when it came to the expected appearance of their on-air talent.
“I will also say that the hair and makeup and clothing, I thought was a little inappropriate,” she said. “Like, the shorter the skirt, the more airtime you got.”
She concluded, “At one point, I was like, ‘This is ridiculous. I’m a lawyer. Why am I wearing this?’”
While Hostin did routinely appear on Fox News, she was not a regular contributor. Her time at the network coincided with the tenure of former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, who died in 2017 less than a year after Fox News host Gretchen Carlson sued Ailes for sexual harassment.
Similarly, O’Reilly was fired from Fox News in 2017 after settling five different lawsuits accusing the host of misconduct.
