Inside Tamron Hall's Heartbreaking Today Show Departure

Tamron Hall is doing great things these days. Hall's talk show, "Tamron Hall," which has already been renewed for a fifth year (via UPI) is in the middle of airing its fourth season and has featured guests such as Michelle Obama, Usher, and Aubrey O'Day. And despite rumors of low ratings and the show's toxic atmosphere, per Daily Mail, it's doing impressive numbers, too. According to Press Party, Hall reached her second-highest ratings for 2022, since January. Per the report, Hall brought in a total of 1.067 million viewers. Hall has won two Daytime Emmy Awards for her efforts, according to IMDb.

However, it's hard not to remember Tamron's feat as being the first Black woman to co-anchor "The Today Show," and her unfortunate 2017 exit. Longtime viewers of the morning program felt blindsided when they learned of Tamron's departure. Initially, things were positioned as if Hall left the long-running program voluntarily. "Tamron is an exceptional journalist, we valued and enjoyed her work at 'Today' and MSNBC and hoped that she would decide to stay," shared the network in a statement, via the New York Times, "We are disappointed that she has chosen to leave, but we wish her all the best." Even Tamron's former "Today" co-anchor Al Roker announced the news of her departure by saying that she had "decided to leave NBC News."

However, that's not exactly how things went down, according to Tamron.

During an appearance on the "Unqualified" podcast, Tamron Hall spoke on her last days at "Today." After host Anna Faris asked her to describe a romantic and professional heartbreak, Tamron dove into to her professional setbacks. Her first disappointment was realizing she'd never be an Olympic track star. Hall added, "Probably losing my spot on the "Today" show because that was a dream job for me." Once she got this dream job, she told herself: "Keep your head down, work hard, it pays off, work ethic." 

Even so, Hall had been hearing "rumblings" that she might be let go. "We'd gone in and presented the ratings which were fantastic, and I'd gone in and presented my cases to, 'Wait a minute, are you sure? You must be talking about somebody else because here's my work ethic and here's how I'm performing. Hall realized "it was going down" when she saw three "decision makers" leaving an office. And while she asserts they didn't fire her, outright, she was offered a role that "was meant for me to refuse," while on air. "At that point, it went from heartbreak to not taking it personal, in an instant."

Previously, Hall spoke about her decision to walk away with People. "It wasn't that I did not know my value. It's that others did not know my value," said Hall. "It was an easy decision, because there was no other decision to make," she added."