The Untold Truth Of Brooke Baldwin

Brooke Baldwin is one of cable news' most recognizable personalities. After obtaining her bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, per CNN, she joined the network in 2008 as a freelancer and, as she shared on Twitter, "scribbled my name on a post it and stuck it outside a temporary office determined to fulfill my dream of becoming a full-time correspondent at CNN." She wasn't kidding! By 2010, Baldwin — who was 31 years old at the time — had been appointed co-host of "CNN Newsroom." Interestingly enough, she got the gig by fluke when "an anchor suddenly departed CNN, leaving this gaping hole in the afternoons," and she was asked to fill in. She was told she would "keep the seat warm just for a week" but didn't leave for 11 years.

Needless to say, Baldwin is accustomed to presenting the world's biggest news to millions of viewers, but in 2021, she herself became the subject of a number of news stories. From quitting her job to making unapologetic comments about CNN, Baldwin was making moves that left fans asking myriad questions, like what she plans to do next and whether she's related to actor Alec Baldwin. With that in mind, we're taking a closer look at the untold truth of Brooke Baldwin.

On April 3, 2020, Brooke Baldwin revealed on Instagram that she had a very symptomatic case of COVID-19. Noting that she'd followed public health guidelines diligently, she shared how the disease "came on suddenly" and left her suffering from "chills, aches, fever." After enduring "a full two-week beating on my body," she recovered and shared her experience (and what she learned from it) in a CNN column. 

In addition to losing her sense of taste and smell, Baldwin slept for 10 to 12 hours a day, experienced time in a "warped and inexact" way, and developed a "golf-ball sized gland swelling under my jaw." Worst of all, however, she was pushed "to some very dark places, especially at night. "Evenings would bring on an eerie melancholy," she wrote, confessing, "I would often cry, unable to stave off the sense of dread and isolation I felt about what was to come."

Calling the illness "relentless, scary, and lonely," she conceded that she was actually fortunate because she "never struggled to breathe" and shared that she was "grateful" because her experience taught her something. "First, that clarity comes from being quiet and listening to our feelings," she wrote. "Second, that connection is more vital to our health and happiness than we might care to admit." Suffering from COVID meant she "stopped doing and started really feeling," found "clarity and connection," and "was able to more purely isolate my gratitude and my values."

If you follow Brooke Baldwin on Instagram, you know she's a fitness buff. Whether it's trying goat yoga, climbing Runyon Canyon, or hiking at Boynton Canyon Vortex, she's game for pretty much anything and, as she shared in a 2021 column for Self, exercise is a major part of her life. It all started when she picked up gymnastics at age 4, then pursued swimming, softball, cheerleading, and shot put in high school. However, being "tall and sturdy" meant dealing with bullies and body insecurity — a problem exacerbated by her journalism career. That's when she "started running for appearance-related reasons," but soon discovered that it made her feel "strong" and "triumphant," as well as giving her "a much-needed confidence boost in a cut-throat career."

Once she signed with CNN, she found "sanctuary in SoulCycle," which made her "feel strong and liberated" and "free to walk out into the world as more authentically me." The more famous she became, the more she turned to fitness, and she would later swear by The Class — "HIIT, church, and therapy all in a 65-minute workout" — and ForwardSpace, a dance program where participants can work up a sweat while "feeling buoyed by the positive energy of the other women in the room." Calling herself a "work in progress," she concluded, "After doing these workouts consistently for a few years (even virtually through the pandemic), I am healing from years of feeling I wasn't thin enough or that my body wasn't fully mine."

On February 16, 2021, Brooke Baldwin opened her show with a major surprise. "I will be leaving CNN in April," she told viewers, explaining how, after 13 years at the network, she wanted to focus on "what I love the most about my work: amplifying the lives of extraordinary Americans and putting my passion for storytelling to good use." Proclaiming that there's "more I need to do outside of this place," she revealed that she had spent two years working on her first book, "Huddle: ​​How Women Unlock Their Collective Power," but underscored the fact that she was leaving without a backup plan. "No, I don't have a job I'm jumping right into and yes — yes — I'm feeling very vulnerable," she confessed.

It's something she reiterated when she was tapped to guest host "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" in March 2021. During her opening monologue, she compared her big career move to doing "a backflip off the high dive," quipping, "I'm just hoping there is water in the pool." Baldwin went on to tell viewers that she made her decision after a lot of deliberation, but confessed, "Here's what I didn't put a lot of thought into: what I'm actually going to do next." While she did like one audience member's suggestion that she should guzzle tequila and scarf down tacos, she underscored, "I actually honestly don't know what I'm going to do," and concluded, "Wish me luck on my next chapter."

In April 2021, Brooke Baldwin published "Huddle: ​​How Women Unlock Their Collective Power," a book exploring "the phenomenon of 'huddling,'" which is when groups of women "provide each other support, empowerment, inspiration, and the strength to solve problems or enact meaningful change," per HarperCollins. As Baldwin told People, she was inspired to write it because the stories she wanted to tell about such women weren't covered by the media. Speaking with Bustle, she added that "huddling has been happening for decades below the surface" and shared her goal to "acknowledge it, validate it, and give it power."

She did just that by interviewing women and sharing her own experiences, and along the way, she also inspired herself. As she told People, working on her debut book nudged her to leave CNN. "I don't know if it was a combination of turning 40 or having done this job for a decade or it was being in the deep end with these women, interviewing them — it was different from my day job," she mused. Noting how on TV she could only speak to people for a few minutes, she shared that "through these [longer] conversations, something in me started to awaken." Crediting the "courage" of her subjects for sparking this change, she continued, "I had this slow realization: How can I hold space with these women and not be the bravest possible version of myself?" And so, Baldwin decided to take a chance and quit CNN.

Brooke Baldwin didn't hold back when she joined Ms. Magazine's "On the Issues" podcast in April 2021 and told host Michele Goodwin that CNN has a gender bias. "The most influential anchors on our network — the highest-paid — are men," she said, elaborating, "My bosses, my executives, are men. The person who oversees CNN dayside is a man, and my executive producer for 10 years is a man, so I have been surrounded by a lot of men." Conceding that things are beginning to change, she stressed the importance of having women in leadership roles as well as in the anchor chair at news networks and warned about the wrong kind of change. "There's no way we will have progress if a bunch of white women are winning," she argued. "It's brown women, Black women, Asian women ... we have to see them reflected in our stories. It's getting better, but we still have a bit of a ways to go," she concluded.

Indeed, The Wrap discovered back in 2018 that CNN might "have a woman problem." After analyzing weekday news programming on cable TV, the outlet concluded that CNN had "significantly fewer women serving in visible on-air roles" when compared to Fox News and MSNBC. Not only did CNN have "half as many female solo anchors" as its competitors, but none of them worked during primetime hours. What's more, while Fox had 15 hours of air time featuring female anchors and co-anchors, CNN only had 11 total hours.

"2017 was the year of #MeToo," Brooke Baldwin proclaimed as she introduced her pet project for CNN — an eight-part online series called "American Woman" — in January 2018. Focusing on "trailblazing women" who "shattered glass ceilings," Baldwin interviewed everyone from Ashley Graham to Issa Rae and Betty White for the series, which she spent a year working on. Explaining why the passion project was so important to her, she expressed her hope that the stories she was telling would have a positive impact on the future. "In order for this movement to continue, for equality to exist, we must never forget the great changes of history have always come through persistence and belief," she said.

Speaking with People, Baldwin revealed that she initially had the idea for the show after covering the 2016 presidential election. "I listened," she reminisced. "And what I heard was female voices in record numbers." After that, attending the Women's March in Washington was the final push she needed. "I saw thousands of women ... who'd come to DC to speak out and speak up," she recalled. "I made a decision to dedicate this next chapter of my career to women like these." As for the importance of #TimesUp, she continued, "I salute all these women (and men too!) who are speaking up ... whose voices haven't been heard in this country. But that is going to change." She concluded, "Welcome to 2018. This is just the beginning."

In May 2018, Brooke Baldwin tied the knot with British producer James Fletcher in an "elegant rustic" ceremony at The Barn at Liberty Farms in Ghent, New York. Sharing their meet-cute with People earlier that year, the anchor recalled how they first encountered one another in 2015 "at a holiday party." She then spent the following year "falling madly in love" with Fletcher. "Took me 36 years to find him, but boy oh boy, he was worth the wait," she gushed.

According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the pair actually had their first dinner date the night they met as Baldwin was flying to Atlanta for the holidays and "insisted" on the outing. After that, she invited Fletcher to New Orleans, where she was covering the New Year's Eve celebration for CNN — and the rest is history. "I knew he was the guy since I met him," she told the outlet, but noted that Fletcher being "incredibly flexible" with her work schedule helped them succeed as a couple. Jump to 2017 and Fletcher popped the question while they were "chilling on the beach" during a trip to Kauai, Hawaii, to celebrate Baldwin's birthday. "All I wanted on my birthday was to be on a surfboard. I got a little bit more than that," she joked. 

As for their wedding day, Baldwin told People she'll "never, ever forget" walking down the aisle to "Love's Divine" and "that moment when our eyes locked." She enthused, "I wanted to run towards him."

"CNN Newsroom" viewers were taken by surprise in January 2019 when the show, which was being hosted by Brooke Baldwin, came back from a commercial break with Brianna Keilar behind the news desk. "What happened to Brooke Baldwin today?" asked one viewer on Twitter. Another tweeted, "@cnn should really make some sort of announcement." Soon enough, it was Baldwin who set the record straight, tweeting that her disappearance was caused by an ocular migraine. "I get 'em about once a year," she wrote. "And in 20 years of doing live TV... that had never happened on set till today. I suddenly couldn't see," she revealed, adding that she was "going home to sit in the dark."

Following her public health scare, Baldwin told People that she got her "first migraine on my first day of work in TV in 2001." While that one was "debilitating," they eventually became less severe. She explained how she senses them coming on, saying that her "vision instantly starts to blur" and she gets an "aura," which is her signal to "act fast and stop everything," take medication, and go into a dark room. "It's scary, but I'm fortunate they don't happen way more often or make me nauseous," she told the outlet. According to Mayo Clinic, ocular migraines are "common." Symptoms aren't always accompanied by a headache and include "flashes of light, zigzagging patterns, blind spots, shimmering spots or stars." The visual disturbances are usually brief. 

While working at CNN, Brooke Baldwin built a special relationship with a security guard named Anthony Anderson. As she explained while guest-hosting "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" in March 2021, he was in charge of walking her out of the building and to her car after every shift "just so I get there safely." Calling him "someone who makes me smile each and every day," she shared the profound impact Anderson had on her, telling viewers, "Every single day at the end of my show, I see him and I ask him how he's doing, and every single day he says to me, 'Brooke, I'm fantastic and only improving."

Just one day before Baldwin announced she was leaving CNN, Anderson gifted her a sweatshirt with that slogan printed on it. "That act of kindness, that gesture [...] so touched me," Baldwin said. As Anderson called into the show from his home, she fought back tears and told him, "You touched my heart." She also showed off her new swag on Instagram, sharing how they'd often "chatted about our Southern roots and BBQ, J's and following dreams," and called him "a rare gem of a human."

The feeling was mutual. Recalling the first day they met, Anderson told "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" viewers, "You asked me my name [...] and you repeated it. That made me feel special. That made me feel more than an escort, more than a security," he gushed, adding, "It meant everything to me, so thank you."

It pays to be a CNN anchor! Just ask Wolf Blitzer, who is said to make $5 million a year, Erin Burnett, who reportedly earns $6 million, or Anderson Cooper, who cashes in a $12 million paycheck. Brooke Baldwin's earnings appear to be right up there, too — according to Celebrity Net Worth, she was making $4 million a year as a primetime host on CNN. 

Meanwhile, Baldwin's overall net worth reportedly clocks in at $10 million and likely includes some earnings from her book deal, although her gig as an author may not have been as lucrative as she had hoped. Looking at Amazon rankings in November 2021, "Huddle: ​​How Women Unlock Their Collective Power" was at number 116,149 on its book list while the Kindle edition was closer to 454,000. Sure, it made it onto the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, per Harper Business, but according to Observer, placement can be purchased. What's more, Bestselling Author Program notes that all it really takes to rank on the list is to sell "between 4,000 and 10,000 books" in a given week.

As for real estate, it's unclear whether Baldwin buys or rents, but one look at her old SoHo apartment, which she moved out of in November 2020, proves she's not struggling for cash. According to Zumper, the average one-bedroom apartment in that neighborhood rents for $4,200 a month while the median sale price in the area, per PropertyShark, is $2.9 million.