Speaker 1: Welcome back to she Pivots. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman.
Speaker 1: When I was planning this season, I wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure she Pivots was a means for building connections. I
Speaker 1: said during our season launch party that we're the generation
Speaker 1: of women who build bridges and don't tear each other down.
Speaker 1: And she pivots as a way to empower women to
Speaker 1: look inward to find success for themselves and not by
Speaker 1: society standards.
Speaker 2: And it's working.
Speaker 1: We're seeing a substantial change in the way women think
Speaker 1: about and talk about their lives and their careers.
Speaker 2: I'm so excited to dig deeper.
Speaker 1: Into these pivotal moments through these shorter, more conversational candid
Speaker 1: convos this season.
Speaker 2: Let's jump right in.
Speaker 1: We're back with another candid convo this week, and this
Speaker 1: time with an absolute legend, Brook Baldwin. Some of you
Speaker 1: may know her from her time on CNN, or maybe
Speaker 1: some of you are as obsessed with her Netflix show
Speaker 1: The Trust as I am. Whichever it is, you know
Speaker 1: that Brooke is a true professional with a glowing personality.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to share our conversation. Her experience reminds
Speaker 1: me so much of my own as she grappled with
Speaker 1: the emotions, the disappointments, and the general life changes that
Speaker 1: happened during her career.
Speaker 2: Shift. Enjoy. My name is Brooke Baldwin. This is a
Speaker 2: fun one. Let's see now. I am a filmmaker, I
Speaker 2: am a TV host, a journalist, and an author. Don't mind
Speaker 2: my daughter's coughing in the background of this audio. Oh
Speaker 2: she's so good. She was like, I'm waiting. I'm waiting.
Speaker 2: So I actually feel.
Speaker 1: Like I want to start exactly where we were just starting.
Speaker 1: You are on the verge of getting your first tattoo.
Speaker 2: I am. I mean, I'm looking at you with your
Speaker 2: rocking purple hair. That is next steps, that's next level cool.
Speaker 2: But for me, yeah, I'm gonna go Sunday get my
Speaker 2: first tattoo. I never had wanted a tattoo. I was
Speaker 2: freaked out by a sense of such permanence for so
Speaker 2: many years plus I such a I was such a
Speaker 2: good girl when I was young. Watch you out. No,
Speaker 2: So I had been thinking about it, and also just
Speaker 2: because this year has been such a pivotal year. But
Speaker 2: for me, so I just wanted to market on my arm.
Speaker 2: At age forty four, I have changed basically every single
Speaker 2: thing in my life. And also the angel number four
Speaker 2: four four is something that I see a lot. It's
Speaker 2: sort of for me. I see it as a divine wink,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to honor that by putting it on
Speaker 2: my somewhere on my forearm. Did you find the tattoo
Speaker 2: artist yet? Like the I have sign I have. I
Speaker 2: reached out to a good girlfriend of mine. She's got
Speaker 2: some like wicked cool tattoos. I don't know anything about
Speaker 2: tattoo artists. I just know I want to like go
Speaker 2: to the shop and like maybe I should drink some
Speaker 2: tequila on the rocks and like have a whole conversation.
Speaker 2: I want him to be like have a gruff voice
Speaker 2: and be called like Mitch or something and give me
Speaker 2: this tattoo. So it's somewhere on Broadway, somewhere in the city.
Speaker 2: I love that it's here in New York because this
Speaker 2: is like feels like my home home. And I'm going
Speaker 2: to sit with him and figure out how exactly where exactly,
Speaker 2: But I'm just going to do it, like it's time,
Speaker 2: yeah to do you have any Yeah? I do.
Speaker 1: I have four tattoos now, So I'm really I'm really
Speaker 1: excited for you for your tattoo Jeredik, thank you and
Speaker 1: your tattoos store.
Speaker 2: I think it's the first time I said it out
Speaker 2: loud actually, other than my boyfriend, like I'm getting a
Speaker 2: tattoo my mo like no, like not even my best
Speaker 2: girlfriends know. Oh you're okay.
Speaker 3: I feel like this is so perfect because we got
Speaker 3: a couple of people had told me that I had
Speaker 3: to talk to you, Like I feel like we kind
Speaker 3: of run in some concentric diagram of life, like we
Speaker 3: have a lot of people in common, yet somehow this
Speaker 3: is the day we meet.
Speaker 2: This is the day I feel like we may have
Speaker 2: met before.
Speaker 1: And then I was this is going to sound like
Speaker 1: I'm a podcast guest name dropping, but this is truly
Speaker 1: how it happened that I was. I texted Sally Christiansen
Speaker 1: from Argent and said, I have an emergency suit situation.
Speaker 1: I want to come by, and she said, Stacy London
Speaker 1: is coming to stop a shop for her own tour.
Speaker 2: Is that how it happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, She's like, just come with Stacy, and I was
Speaker 1: like perfect. So like Stacy thinks she's doing her own
Speaker 1: shop and I walked in and was like okay, now
Speaker 1: it's for both of us, and now you're giving me advice. Yes,
Speaker 1: And while we were all shopping together, they kept saying,
Speaker 1: I cannot Emily.
Speaker 2: I cannot believe you don't know Brooke yet. Wow, you
Speaker 2: have to talk to Brooke.
Speaker 1: And so people had been telling me we had to meet,
Speaker 1: and it was in that moment.
Speaker 2: I love Sally and Stacy. I was listening. I listened
Speaker 2: to your Sally podcast just yesterday. She they're both so special.
Speaker 2: I got to know Stacy through just obviously all things argent.
Speaker 2: I'm such a champion of anything women own, women founded,
Speaker 2: and so to know her is to love her. We
Speaker 2: finally we finally met earlier this year in Los Angeles
Speaker 2: and just like fell in love and have had I'm
Speaker 2: going to see her for drinks on Monday, because that's
Speaker 2: what we do. Just to be the first person to
Speaker 2: show off your tattoos, to show off my four four four,
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, yes, we'd be like it's like twenty
Speaker 2: three degrees in New York when we're walking around like
Speaker 2: a tank top, just like I want.
Speaker 4: Everyone is newly engaged with the ring, like, oh sorry,
Speaker 4: well e, so you need to see my left forearm
Speaker 4: and then Stacy London, like who didn't grow up watching
Speaker 4: What Not to Wear? And I love her in her
Speaker 4: rocking like silver Fox, you know, streaking her hair and
Speaker 4: who she has become and how she has come home
Speaker 4: to herself like I fell to her as well, and
Speaker 4: so like between there are some extraordinary women, a who exists,
Speaker 4: be who exists in the city, and just to be
Speaker 4: able to bump around with them and then to meet you,
Speaker 4: you know, it's so exciting. I know, I really am
Speaker 4: so excited to have met you.
Speaker 1: I feel like, like, yes, we're all going through Sure,
Speaker 1: it's the pivot.
Speaker 2: I feel it's so clat I just keep saying it,
Speaker 2: but it is.
Speaker 1: It's through this this self actualization, the self realization.
Speaker 2: That we were driven.
Speaker 1: For so long and defined by our careers and we
Speaker 1: were successful in them, yes, and now to realize that
Speaker 1: it's actually not everything we are, yes, and that we
Speaker 1: can find different parts of ourselves through this like unknown,
Speaker 1: which we've never done before.
Speaker 2: I mean, we all worked so hard to get to
Speaker 2: where we were. I think that was a huge part
Speaker 2: of it for me. I was writing about this the
Speaker 2: other day, is like to come up in TV news.
Speaker 2: You know, I graduated college in journalism and Spanish. Never
Speaker 2: wanted to be on camera, always assumed I'd be a
Speaker 2: writer or producer, you know, like calling the shots behind
Speaker 2: the scenes, cut to you know, I end up trying
Speaker 2: to become this reporter I work in. You know, there
Speaker 2: are two hundred TV markets, one being here in New
Speaker 2: York City, two hundred being like a small town Alaska,
Speaker 2: and I land in like one hundred and ninety two
Speaker 2: in Charlottesville, Virginia, and I eventually, you know, worked my
Speaker 2: way up. But it's never it's never a guarantee you
Speaker 2: know that you're going to land anywhere, let alone you know,
Speaker 2: have a dream job, whether it's a network news gig
Speaker 2: or a cable news network. The point being like, for
Speaker 2: so many years, we claw, we grind, we hustle. In
Speaker 2: my case, I literally squatted in an empty office and
Speaker 2: somehow talk security at the CNN center in Atlanta to
Speaker 2: just keep letting me in the door. I scribbled my
Speaker 2: name on a post it. I put it on this
Speaker 2: office that I claimed. I don't know how I had
Speaker 2: the hubrist to claim it the way I did, but
Speaker 2: for two years, essentially I had this office and at
Speaker 2: the end of that, you know, chapter of my career
Speaker 2: in TV journalism to leave to know how hard I
Speaker 2: had climbed and scraped and posted it. That's the part
Speaker 2: like I don't talk about this a lot, but on
Speaker 2: my last day at CNN, I don't know what possessed
Speaker 2: me to do this, but I pulled out my journal
Speaker 2: and I journaled to my younger self and I needed
Speaker 2: to promise her, like I'm weeping in my apartment in
Speaker 2: no Lda, weeping telling her don't be disappointed in me.
Speaker 2: I know we work so hard, but just hang in there.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna make you proud again. But at that point,
Speaker 2: it had just gotten into a space where I knew
Speaker 2: I needed to find dream, a new dream. But it's
Speaker 2: that like we worked so hard to get there. How
Speaker 2: do I tell my twenty one, twenty two, twenty three,
Speaker 2: twenty four all the way to like my thirty year
Speaker 2: old self, we got to go, we got to move on,
Speaker 2: We've got to pivot.
Speaker 1: It was hard for me by the way that hits
Speaker 1: like I might start crying right now, like I just
Speaker 1: hit so deep, But it wasn't even so much that
Speaker 1: I for me, It wasn't it didn't even so much
Speaker 1: feel like I was betraying my younger self. It was
Speaker 1: what did I do it for? If I'm just going
Speaker 1: to walk away like I sacrificed so much? To me,
Speaker 1: it felt like if I'm just walking away, so I
Speaker 1: didn't know where.
Speaker 2: I was going? Yes? Yes? And who am I? Like?
Speaker 2: My north star in decision making was that I was
Speaker 2: a hard worker. Yes.
Speaker 1: I really felt like if I wasn't sacrificing physically, emotionally,
Speaker 1: health wise, then it meant that I wasn't working hard enough.
Speaker 1: And if I didn't have that as a north star,
Speaker 1: then I didn't even know who I was.
Speaker 2: Where do we learn that? Was it our parents? Was
Speaker 2: it the society? Was it that we were young women
Speaker 2: still coming up where it was so much harder to
Speaker 2: get a seat at the table, and so we knew
Speaker 2: we needed to sweat and claw harder. And then that
Speaker 2: became associated with success and you get the hit of
Speaker 2: what is that like Sarahtona where you know you're doing
Speaker 2: something good and you're moving forward. I mean, I had
Speaker 2: my partner saying to me my Netflix show came out
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, like I don't know, one
Speaker 2: of the first couple of days, it was like number
Speaker 2: two most stream shows on Netflix, and I'm walking over
Speaker 2: this bridge and Tribeca and I start to weep because
Speaker 2: something feels disjointed in me because I'm like I think subconsciously,
Speaker 2: I'm like, wait, so I just like get this call
Speaker 2: from Netflix, I get this job, I do the thing,
Speaker 2: I do it well, we're rewarded for it. But where
Speaker 2: was my blood? Sweat and tears? Like something's not what's wrong?
Speaker 2: What's wrong? And I had this moment and he had
Speaker 2: to like put his arms around me and say, that
Speaker 2: doesn't always mean success anymore for you, like that chapter
Speaker 2: of your life. God bless you for doing all of
Speaker 2: that to get to where you worked and then have
Speaker 2: this launching point to do all these other things. But like,
Speaker 2: fuck that, we don't need to do that anymore. Hallelujah.
Speaker 1: I still feel guilty sometimes, you know, I've designed this
Speaker 1: whole thing so that I can pick my kids up
Speaker 1: from school.
Speaker 2: I mean I literally created an entire new career so
Speaker 2: that I could to do this.
Speaker 1: Yes, but I still feel like, am I not supposed
Speaker 1: to be doing this? Am I not trying hard enough?
Speaker 2: Switching over it a little bit, like yeah, like I
Speaker 2: doesn't feel real enough because I'm not physically pushing myself
Speaker 2: to the edge on a regular base. Totally understand I
Speaker 2: totally I have to say when that Netflix show went up,
Speaker 2: which first of all, I cannotlways talk about it. I'm obsessed.
Speaker 1: I loved it so much you but also I mean
Speaker 1: from you know, we've really only been connected through Sally
Speaker 1: and Stacy for a couple of months, like not even
Speaker 1: that long, and I felt like from the minute that
Speaker 1: we connected, I so appreciated your loud support, Like I
Speaker 1: just felt like I felt your energy that you are
Speaker 1: just someone who supports other women, champions to the woman,
Speaker 1: like truly true, Like I felt it in my bones
Speaker 1: and I felt it so much. And then when I
Speaker 1: was launching this season of the show, I was able
Speaker 1: to launch it on the Nasdaq closing bell, which by
Speaker 1: the way, they gave us like thirty six hours to
Speaker 1: prepare for.
Speaker 2: So also that felt crazy, like you're you know you
Speaker 2: you literally can because you did.
Speaker 1: It was like I was seven stories high in Times
Speaker 1: Square and didn't have more than thirty six hours to
Speaker 1: think about the fact that it was going to happen,
Speaker 1: like it's so.
Speaker 2: Good, that would be crazy, like is this really happening?
Speaker 2: But so I did it. And after you ring the
Speaker 2: bell and you're up on the nasdack, then they bring
Speaker 2: you out into Times Square to look at you as
Speaker 2: if you need more moments and just be like, all
Speaker 2: this shit is really happening.
Speaker 1: And when I got out there, I looked over and
Speaker 1: I realized that my giant seven story face in Times
Speaker 1: Square was right next to your Netflix time a giant.
Speaker 1: I sounds so ridiculous, but I really felt like there
Speaker 1: was this energy there and there was this sign that like, like, bitch,
Speaker 1: we're doing.
Speaker 2: It, girl, we are like doing your Times Square billboard
Speaker 2: neighbors in when you know, when we were children, when
Speaker 2: I was a little girl, like coming to New York
Speaker 2: for the first time with my family for the Thanksgiving
Speaker 2: Day parade when I was in the fifth grade. You know,
Speaker 2: if I had ever thought that one day I would
Speaker 2: have my face on a billboard in Times Square, like
Speaker 2: what and that you did it, and that we were
Speaker 2: both texting because it wasn't just about the billboard, obviously
Speaker 2: it's cool, but we were both texting about how we
Speaker 2: were both on network morning shows surrounding the launch of
Speaker 2: the podcast the season and for me, the launch of
Speaker 2: my Netflix show and that for me, it was showing
Speaker 2: up on television even more just like you know, I
Speaker 2: love Brene Brown so much, talk so much about armor,
Speaker 2: you know, just like showing up and being seen instead
Speaker 2: of showing up with all the armor and literally all
Speaker 2: the like CNN Shillac like loved all of my glam squad,
Speaker 2: like love your sisters. But it was just a lot
Speaker 2: of armor, physical and intangible that I brought with me
Speaker 2: each and every day to do that show and to
Speaker 2: cover those stories and the tragedy and the bullshit in
Speaker 2: Washington and everything else. So to finally sit and do
Speaker 2: television with all those layers peeled away, and I know
Speaker 2: you thought, well the same. You know, you weren't talking
Speaker 2: about politics and the Democratic Party and the election, you know,
Speaker 2: you were talking about you. It was crazy. It was
Speaker 2: very surreal, surreal.
Speaker 1: It was very surreal because I think that there was
Speaker 1: something that we like when we were on TV before
Speaker 1: we were It was the armor and weren't playing a
Speaker 1: role like we were saying we were ourselves, yes, but
Speaker 1: it was there to fill fill a we were doing
Speaker 1: a job, we were filling information.
Speaker 2: We're working for someone else. Yeah, there was a mission.
Speaker 2: There was someone else's mission and now we are possessed
Speaker 2: with our own purpose. Yes, yes we're fully My insides
Speaker 2: are on my outsides like if you really don't like
Speaker 2: if you don't like it, then that's okay. But I
Speaker 2: am who I am. I'm letting it all hang out.
Speaker 2: You and your purple hair, me and my tattoo, Like
Speaker 2: this is who we are, this is how I roll.
Speaker 2: And I never want to go back.
Speaker 1: How did you decide that it was time? Like did
Speaker 1: you think you just had to leave the network? You
Speaker 1: had to leave it all behind? Let's see, how do
Speaker 1: I want to get into this?
Speaker 2: So so working in TV was a dream and to work,
Speaker 2: to sacrifice to you know, like work all the crazy
Speaker 2: hours and all the holidays. Really, my entire twenty plus
Speaker 2: year career up until the end such a pleasure and
Speaker 2: a privilege. I knew that somewhere along the line, like
Speaker 2: post Women's March, pre pandemic, I knew that my dream
Speaker 2: job may or may not be my dream job anymore.
Speaker 2: I remember sitting on that beautiful set, all like perfectly
Speaker 2: quaffed with my fancy clothes and my red soled shoes
Speaker 2: and looking out at the skyline and in between you know,
Speaker 2: amazing guests that I'm talking to, but you know, talking
Speaker 2: about that other White House a lot. And I remember
Speaker 2: having a moment like where I just allowed myself to think, wow,
Speaker 2: Like it's almost like when you're in a relationship and
Speaker 2: you've been in a relationship for a really long time,
Speaker 2: you've evolved and changed, and maybe they've evolved and changed
Speaker 2: and you're not in the same place anymore. But you're
Speaker 2: trying so hard to fit the puzzle pieces, but it
Speaker 2: just isn't maybe fully fitting. And you know, I had
Speaker 2: tried to do all this work on the side, this
Speaker 2: women's series, and I wrote my book Huddle Through, obviously
Speaker 2: not a slow news period, and that was my own
Speaker 2: soul work, right, But eventually I just knew, sitting in
Speaker 2: that commercial break, dazing out the window in between segments,
Speaker 2: like is this making me happy the way it used to?
Speaker 2: And I do. I still have that like warm feeling
Speaker 2: in my belly still to do all of this because
Speaker 2: it's a calling, you know. I felt called to journalism.
Speaker 2: I felt called and I still feel called to telling
Speaker 2: the truth. But the way in which we covered news changed,
Speaker 2: and I also, you know, started speaking up a bit
Speaker 2: more about what I wanted to cover how I wanted
Speaker 2: to cover it. I was a big I'll own this
Speaker 2: like I for a many years. I think part of
Speaker 2: it is growing up as a woman in the South
Speaker 2: wanted was told not to be big for your breches. Yes,
Speaker 2: you can be anything you want to be, but also
Speaker 2: like color in the lines. And I did that. I
Speaker 2: was a really good girl. I was a really good
Speaker 2: girl for a lot of years and I said I
Speaker 2: said yes a lot, and it got me really far
Speaker 2: pretty fast. And then eventually I embedded myself in writing
Speaker 2: this book, Huddle, which is about the collective power of women,
Speaker 2: and so on the weekend. So it was like this
Speaker 2: crazy juxtaposition of like covering the Molar investigation and all
Speaker 2: these mostly dudes in Washington with me on the weekend,
Speaker 2: sitting in sacred spaces with black judges in Texas and
Speaker 2: bad ass former veteran now turned freshman congress women or
Speaker 2: teachers or you know the Megan or Pinos and the
Speaker 2: Sue Birds of the world, or some of the women,
Speaker 2: the black women who started Black Lives Matter. Anyway, I'm
Speaker 2: sitting with these women and I'm like realizing, wait, these
Speaker 2: you don't always have to say yes you don't always
Speaker 2: have to be a good girl. You can speak the
Speaker 2: fuck up and when you feel that it's right and
Speaker 2: not color in the lines. And so so I came
Speaker 2: back through that experience speaking up a little bit more
Speaker 2: at CNN. And I don't think that I will never
Speaker 2: know what the truth is in all of that, But
Speaker 2: it was sort of this confluence of me realizing it
Speaker 2: wasn't my dream job anymore and CNN probably not appreciating
Speaker 2: that I wasn't willing to do all the things every
Speaker 2: day the way that maybe some other people weren't doing them.
Speaker 2: And it came to a point where I left.
Speaker 1: I left, I think for a lot of people that
Speaker 1: had to cover the administration. I think also the pandemic,
Speaker 1: a lot of journalists really burnt out, Yeah, like the
Speaker 1: way that the rest of us regular citizens felt burnt out.
Speaker 2: Like first we were glued.
Speaker 1: To the news, and then we were unglued because we
Speaker 1: needed a little space.
Speaker 2: Journalists weren't able to do that. I think it took
Speaker 2: a huge mental toll on journalists that we don't appreciate,
Speaker 2: you know, I it did, I know for sure. But
Speaker 2: it was also, like I would say, covering the pandemic was.
Speaker 2: This may sound bizarre, but one of the highlights of
Speaker 2: my career in that this was a story. This was
Speaker 2: a story that was hitting every single person around the globe,
Speaker 2: and it was hitting ordinary people. This wasn't a special
Speaker 2: person story. This wasn't a celebrity story. This wasn't a
Speaker 2: why guys and ties in Washington story? You know, this
Speaker 2: wasn't every person's story. And so to be able to
Speaker 2: sit and speak to you know, in the early part
Speaker 2: of the pandemic, I remember interviewing this woman who lost
Speaker 2: her mother in the hospital and at the time we
Speaker 2: were like, we couldn't understand how she couldn't go see
Speaker 2: and hold her mother's hand in the hospital. And you know,
Speaker 2: the nurse is so lovely that she's facetiming the daughter
Speaker 2: and literally watching and holding her mother's hand as she passes,
Speaker 2: as she watches through FaceTime. So I think that actually,
Speaker 2: I think a lot of this may sound bizarre to say,
Speaker 2: like a lot of us have of endurance, like emotional
Speaker 2: endurance and covering. You know, I think of all the
Speaker 2: like mass shootings, the school shootings, the natural disasters. I
Speaker 2: actually wouldn't say I was burnt out. I was out
Speaker 2: of alignment with what the news was becoming. I think
Speaker 2: there's an important difference there, and I part of me
Speaker 2: still may want to jump back in at some point,
Speaker 2: But it was how I think cable news was covering
Speaker 2: that administration, how we were being told to cover it.
Speaker 2: I felt that I lost a lot of my editorial
Speaker 2: power that I had gained through the years, and it
Speaker 2: felt much more like a machine every half hour, hit this, this,
Speaker 2: and this every half hour, and the shows weren't as
Speaker 2: distinguished and differentiated from one another. And I felt that
Speaker 2: my voice. I felt that I felt more like a
Speaker 2: mouthpiece than a voice. And I was finding my voice
Speaker 2: as I was coming to that realization. And so I
Speaker 2: want to exist in my own space, even though I
Speaker 2: may not be, you know, as successful if you're looking
Speaker 2: at my bank account as I had been then. But
Speaker 2: I want to hold on to my voice and grow it.
Speaker 2: And I want to be in a space where I'm
Speaker 2: in alignment with myself and my soul and what I'm
Speaker 2: doing and being control of the stories I'm telling. Yeah,
Speaker 2: even though that means saying yes to certain things and
Speaker 2: saying no to others. Well, I think it can sometimes
Speaker 2: be hard to appreciate the difference in coverage change. I remember,
Speaker 2: even just as a Democratic strategist, as a commentator at first,
Speaker 2: when Trump was in a campaign, so they would generally
Speaker 2: match me up with a Republican strategist how the segments
Speaker 2: would work, and the Republican strategists pre Trump had generally
Speaker 2: worked in Republican administrations or held some position of power.
Speaker 2: The surrogates that were coming up for the Trump administration
Speaker 2: were basically just people that supported Trump, and so when
Speaker 2: you guys would have us on in segments, I would
Speaker 2: talk about what had happened in previous elections or campaigns,
Speaker 2: and they would just kind of say what they thought,
Speaker 2: and so I found that kind of insulting. But I
Speaker 2: slowly realized CNN had more Trump surrogates than I think
Speaker 2: any other network. Is generally how we were paired.
Speaker 1: The difference in Fox News, I actually think was super
Speaker 1: interesting and ended up leading to me not going on
Speaker 1: Fox News anymore, was because the Republican strategists they had
Speaker 1: me on with really did have experience working in the
Speaker 1: Republican Party in Washington, and through the twenty sixteen presidential
Speaker 1: the Fox News had the tiniest green room like before
Speaker 1: and after the segments, and we had to get their
Speaker 1: hours early for hair and makeup at Fox.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, you probably never went into the green room there.
Speaker 2: It was smaller than CNN. Wow. You can't believe.
Speaker 1: It was smaller than the CNN green room zy bureau,
Speaker 1: I know, but it was like even tighter.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And we had to be there so early for hair
Speaker 1: and makeup. So I spent so much time in the
Speaker 1: green room with them before our segments. And almost none
Speaker 1: of them supported Trump in twenty sixteen in the primary.
Speaker 2: They thought he was really bad for the party.
Speaker 1: And then as he started winning the states, and then
Speaker 1: eventually when he got the nomination in twenty sixteen, they
Speaker 1: actually let go of all their Republican tributors, like they
Speaker 1: ended their contracts because their contributors weren't aligned enough with Trump,
Speaker 1: and so they started hiring all of these essentially random
Speaker 1: people that were Trump supporters but hadn't actually worked in
Speaker 1: politics before. So now I was going on matched up
Speaker 1: against someone who truly knew nothing and was just repeating
Speaker 1: Trump's line. And they felt their line at Fox News
Speaker 1: that they were following their audience, like their audience had
Speaker 1: preferred Trump. But so they needed strategists that preferred Trump,
Speaker 1: and I started to think, what am I doing here?
Speaker 1: Like if I'm not even having any kind of strategic
Speaker 1: conversation with someone on the other side, then I'm obviously
Speaker 1: not following their audience.
Speaker 2: Like I I don't know what to do anymore. No,
Speaker 2: I can understand how that would be so hard and
Speaker 2: so frustrating and almost like insulting for you to do that.
Speaker 1: Some of them would start to try to fight with
Speaker 1: me on Twitter after the segments, and I was like, guys, like,
Speaker 1: we have a business relationship here, Like we go into
Speaker 1: the green room, we're collegial, we go on air, we fight,
Speaker 1: we come off for fine.
Speaker 2: No, but that's it's Twitter. It was Twitter. Yeah, Like
Speaker 2: ultimately these segments were made to you know, let's be honest,
Speaker 2: the numbers of people watching cable news is down, down, down.
Speaker 2: So what these producers try to do is, you know,
Speaker 2: produce these segments for clicks they're thinking of. For example,
Speaker 2: from my perspective as the host, you know you would
Speaker 2: want like Brooke Baldwin takes down Trump aid so and
Speaker 2: so or ooh burned, like oh, you know you want
Speaker 2: to have a takedown, and so what would happen? Let me,
Speaker 2: let me narrate as you're annoyed, like with the in
Speaker 2: the double box. In the Brady box, it is Kate
Speaker 2: Cable News, right, so it'd be me in the middle
Speaker 2: with you and fill in the blank, you know, Trump person.
Speaker 2: They would want you guys to fight, right that That is,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, terrible television because no one actually gets
Speaker 2: a cogent thought out. It's just people talking over each other,
Speaker 2: which is also really hard for me as a host
Speaker 2: to you know, you're essentially the referee. Sometimes it can
Speaker 2: be incredibly effective, and I can understand why we did
Speaker 2: it when one way, because you can't just have a
Speaker 2: one sided, you know, piece about what's happening politically in
Speaker 2: the country. But the way in which some of these
Speaker 2: folks would fight, and then ultimately you would want to
Speaker 2: have you know that up Let's say the segment up
Speaker 2: on CNN dot Com. You'd want to have it up
Speaker 2: on Twitter. You would want to have then the like
Speaker 2: sort of like fire the embers lit on Twitter so
Speaker 2: that people would go and find the segment. And you know,
Speaker 2: I can imagine from that other person's perspective, you know,
Speaker 2: they probably weren't as known they were trying to get followers,
Speaker 2: and maybe from a cable producer perspective, they want that
Speaker 2: fight on Twitter because they want people to click on
Speaker 2: the segment. They're like, oh wait, who is this person?
Speaker 2: Oh wait, let me backtrack and find the segment that
Speaker 2: led to this fighting whether you know. But at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, like, I'm just all about this
Speaker 2: is such a cliche word these days, but I'm so
Speaker 2: about like authenticity, like y'all, let's just keep it real, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, and so much of that is just so
Speaker 2: it's fake, it's bullshit. I'm literally allergic to it. So
Speaker 2: when I found myself sitting in the middle of it,
Speaker 2: and sometimes it was fascinating, but sometimes even I would
Speaker 2: just be like, what am I doing here? How is
Speaker 2: this furthering anyone's education on X subjects? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So how long did it take from that realization until
Speaker 1: you left.
Speaker 2: Gosh? Twenty twenty eighteen, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen was tough.
Speaker 2: Twenty twenty then came the pandemic where we were all
Speaker 2: just like where are we what's happening? We started showing
Speaker 2: up to work, you know, going to work in like
Speaker 2: these little broom closet studios. So no whe would get sick,
Speaker 2: and then twenty twenty one I left, so it all
Speaker 2: started happening in there.
Speaker 1: That's a long time, though, Like to feel not just
Speaker 1: out of alignment, but on national TV every day, feeling
Speaker 1: out of alignment.
Speaker 2: That's interesting to think about, Like in broad daylight in
Speaker 2: front of everyone, you know, I was trying to show
Speaker 2: up and play the part and be the best, most
Speaker 2: authentic version of myself, while you know, I've actually spent
Speaker 2: quite a bit of time rereading my I'm a journaler
Speaker 2: and rereading my journals, you know, I mean honestly going
Speaker 2: back to like twenty fifteen when we were covering you know,
Speaker 2: what would happen in twenty sixteen and twenty sixteen, and
Speaker 2: what happened happened. Shame on us. This is the media
Speaker 2: for not calling it, not seeing it. And then twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, I really got to start covering
Speaker 2: more women, which really like soothed my soul, but also
Speaker 2: you know, just yeah, it was a long time. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was a long time. It was a long time.
Speaker 2: It was hard.
Speaker 1: It was do you remember what like your first day
Speaker 1: was after you were off air, You're like all right,
Speaker 1: Today's the day that I wake up the.
Speaker 2: Time I want.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a short break for some ads.
Speaker 2: Now back to the show. Gosh, Well, I flew in
Speaker 2: two of my closest girlfriends that weekend. We went. I
Speaker 2: left CNN. It was bizarre because, like nobody was at
Speaker 2: work right because it's the pandemic. So I like, leave
Speaker 2: this thirteen year career. I slip out the side door.
Speaker 2: I met by my adorable security guard, masked security guard
Speaker 2: who hugs me. I cry. I slip in the town car.
Speaker 2: These girls are meeting me. My husband, my then husband
Speaker 2: was with me, and we all go. I don't know
Speaker 2: what possessed me to do this, but I wanted to
Speaker 2: go to the Empire State Building and climb to the
Speaker 2: tip top. Don't know why. I love that building. It's
Speaker 2: my favorite building in all of New York City. I
Speaker 2: think I just felt that I knew I was on
Speaker 2: the precipice of this new chapter. I had no freaking
Speaker 2: clue what I was going to do. All these people
Speaker 2: were like, Okay, no, Brooke, but really, what are you
Speaker 2: leaving for? Why are you going? What is your job
Speaker 2: that you're not telling us? And I was like, no,
Speaker 2: for real, I have no idea, and I needed to
Speaker 2: sit at the top of the Empire State Building and
Speaker 2: I think, just have like a centered moment of here
Speaker 2: I am. There's all this blank space ahead of me,
Speaker 2: and to just like recalibrate, you know, I was my
Speaker 2: job and who do I want to be? Who am I?
Speaker 2: What is coming home to myself? And that was then
Speaker 2: the beginning of my most ginormous pivot of my life. Okay,
Speaker 2: so you pivoted professionally and also at the same time
Speaker 2: you pivoted personally. Yeah, how related were those two? Let's
Speaker 2: see as I So I got married in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: which was when we met. Our first year of dating
Speaker 2: was twenty sixteen. So if you can imagine, you know,
Speaker 2: he's living in London. I'm in New York City. I'm
Speaker 2: covering this insane election. I'm like, do you want to
Speaker 2: meet me in New Hampshire, Iowa or Miami. We take
Speaker 2: our first vacation in Asia. My feet don't hit the ground.
Speaker 2: It was like the most incredible, most insane year of
Speaker 2: my professional and personal life. I fell madly in love
Speaker 2: with this person. We get married twenty eighteen. I feel
Speaker 2: like I hit the lottery he is, you know, I
Speaker 2: thought it was marrying James Bond and he's an amazing,
Speaker 2: brilliant soul. He moves to America, we move in together
Speaker 2: in Soho, and therein sort of starts my what am
Speaker 2: I doing with my life? My professional life sort of
Speaker 2: churn right, And so maybe there was a little voice
Speaker 2: early in like, listen, my job was number one, Like
Speaker 2: I didn't I didn't work that hard for all that
Speaker 2: many those many years to like I was just like,
Speaker 2: what's happening, What's happening within me? What's happening with this industry?
Speaker 2: And so that was my most sort of predominant concern.
Speaker 2: I think under the surface was starting to assess, like,
Speaker 2: all right, state of my marriage, state of my marriage.
Speaker 2: COVID hits, everything got really quiet. I love that. I
Speaker 2: think it was a Glennon Doyle once said something like,
Speaker 2: it's like when COVID hit, it was like we were
Speaker 2: all these snow globes, and in normal life, the snow
Speaker 2: is like wsh and wushing all around and we are
Speaker 2: allowed to be weren't distracted by everything. COVID hits, snow
Speaker 2: hits the ground and you're just sort of stuck there.
Speaker 2: In the center is this figurine like, Oh who am I?
Speaker 2: What's happening? Who am I married to? Do I like
Speaker 2: my job? Do I like myself? Do I like my friends?
Speaker 2: You know, we went through all of this, and I
Speaker 2: think in that quiet I started wonder, I started to reassess.
Speaker 2: I started really doing like deep excavation work within myself,
Speaker 2: which then only got exacerbated once I left SANN in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one. And that was the beginning so interesting,
Speaker 2: all these like major sort of like points on a grid.
Speaker 2: And by twenty twenty one, in April, I leave SANN
Speaker 2: and I go on this deep, deep dive into myself.
Speaker 2: I deepen my spiritual practice. I go on retreats, I
Speaker 2: do all the things, I read all the books, just
Speaker 2: trying to like find solid ground. Who am I? I'm
Speaker 2: just Brooke. I'm not Brooke Baldwin from CNN. And in
Speaker 2: that time, I think that's when our paths really diverged.
Speaker 2: And I think that I was changing. I know I
Speaker 2: was changing, and I ultimately really wanted him to join
Speaker 2: me on my path, and I think he was plenty
Speaker 2: happy on his. And in the end, what I learned
Speaker 2: from CNN having maybe stayed in something. I don't know
Speaker 2: if I overstayed or the way in which I left
Speaker 2: wasn't entirely lovely experience, and I didn't want that for
Speaker 2: my marriage. And so I went to the Hoffmann Institute.
Speaker 2: Have you heard of this place? Only that I listened
Speaker 2: to your podcast with them, but I don't know about it.
Speaker 2: I went to this place in Petaluma, California, and I
Speaker 2: wouldn't say it changed my life. I changed my life,
Speaker 2: but there's a lot of work around parenting patterns from
Speaker 2: your childhood, all this like deep, deep work you do.
Speaker 2: And as a result of that, this thing happened while
Speaker 2: I was there, and I realized it was time for
Speaker 2: me to love and let my husband go. And I
Speaker 2: don't recommend divorce to the faint of heart. Is it
Speaker 2: is it's coming home and telling him I love you,
Speaker 2: but I need to let you go is the hardest
Speaker 2: thing I've ever done in my life. But I am
Speaker 2: also every day so proud that I found the strength
Speaker 2: to do it. And that is how I got there.
Speaker 2: And I know that what happened this may sound bizarre
Speaker 2: to connect it to you about what happened with me
Speaker 2: and CNN and falling out of alignment and overstaying in
Speaker 2: that sense taught me not to do that in my marriage.
Speaker 2: I could have easily hung in. And I mean, we
Speaker 2: don't have kids. We didn't have kids, so I understand
Speaker 2: like people women who men who stay in for the
Speaker 2: sake of the kids. I get that. But because we
Speaker 2: didn't have kids, I think it made it easier for
Speaker 2: me to just take a deep, profound assessment of the
Speaker 2: stay of my marriage and my life and my dreams
Speaker 2: and happiness and his and make that call and know
Speaker 2: that I needed to move on. When you were doing
Speaker 2: all of that spiritual work, what do you think you
Speaker 2: were looking for? Like was it sort of like a
Speaker 2: big funnel and you were just looking for an idea
Speaker 2: to cling on to. Were you looking for like an
Speaker 2: archetype of self to say, yes, this is the new me.
Speaker 2: Like I wasn't sure what I was looking for, So
Speaker 2: I'm so curious how you were thinking. That's such a
Speaker 2: great question. I remember when I left CNN, you asked
Speaker 2: me if I remember where I woke up the next morning.
Speaker 2: Here's what I remember, Like right afterwards, we went to
Speaker 2: the Caribbean. We went to the British Version Islands for
Speaker 2: three weeks and I just like soaked up the sun
Speaker 2: and drank a lot of rum and like let my
Speaker 2: hair be curly and wild. And realized halfway through that
Speaker 2: the like hanging out on the beach drinking umbrella drinks
Speaker 2: like was not going to do the doo. And so
Speaker 2: I remember texting my friend Taran Tumy, who's the founder
Speaker 2: of the class, and I was like, Yo, tt, I
Speaker 2: feel like there's more for me to look into and
Speaker 2: myself in my life, and can you please help me
Speaker 2: point me toward something? And she she did, and I
Speaker 2: went on this retreat with her in Sedona that summer,
Speaker 2: and she really kind of became a sort of spiritual
Speaker 2: sherpa for me and they and the way that she
Speaker 2: jokes to this day like she didn't know how much
Speaker 2: I really wasn't aware of her didn't know, and I
Speaker 2: think I didn't know it was like blank slate ahead
Speaker 2: of me. I just knew that I felt that for
Speaker 2: the last handful of years I was not I keep
Speaker 2: coming back to in alignment, like I'm trying to figure
Speaker 2: out how else to say it, Like my insides didn't
Speaker 2: match my outsides, Like I love myself as a little
Speaker 2: girl but somewhere along the line, like I deviated from
Speaker 2: this path of who who I was and how I
Speaker 2: showed up, and instead I feel like I started showing
Speaker 2: up trying to be the person that other people or
Speaker 2: my boss or my producer wanted me to be. And
Speaker 2: I did that to myself. Nobody did that to me.
Speaker 2: I did that to myself, and so I knew that
Speaker 2: I needed to read the books and be around the
Speaker 2: people who thought these bigger things, who were open to
Speaker 2: you know, God, sore spirit whatever you want to call it,
Speaker 2: like the spiritual Advisor I know calls it like Elmo,
Speaker 2: like whatever you want to call it. I just knew
Speaker 2: I wanted to like almost like be my journalistic self
Speaker 2: and soak up like how these people existed, how they
Speaker 2: moved through the world. I was fascinated because I knew
Speaker 2: I wanted some of that, and I think through that experience,
Speaker 2: my biggest what I I needed to learn was to
Speaker 2: have faith. And I don't mean that in like an
Speaker 2: overtly like I'm not a super religious person, but I
Speaker 2: needed to learn to just like let the fuck go.
Speaker 2: Like for me, I think of always. Somebody was telling
Speaker 2: me this the other day, like I'm always so anticipatory,
Speaker 2: like I'm like, Okay, what's the next thing. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: rush to this thing. I'm I'm gonna get out ahead
Speaker 2: of this thing. And it's because I'm in fear, right,
Speaker 2: I think that I can control the thing by getting
Speaker 2: ahead of it, or being prepared or being the good girl,
Speaker 2: whatever it is. And I had to learn to sit still,
Speaker 2: to get quiet, to like clean my internal mirror, to
Speaker 2: listen to my inner knowing, to listen to that little
Speaker 2: voice that we all have to like get to know
Speaker 2: her again, to get to know that light, little little Brookie,
Speaker 2: like the little girl within me who early on knew
Speaker 2: right from wrong, knew what she wanted, knew what she
Speaker 2: was about. I needed to find her again, That's what
Speaker 2: it was. And in finding her again, we have conversations
Speaker 2: every day. No, So in finding her again, I now
Speaker 2: feel that I can be in faith and know that
Speaker 2: even though I don't have any answers to or any
Speaker 2: real security, you know, professionally moving forward, I know that
Speaker 2: like in the end, it's going to be okay. Does
Speaker 2: that make sense? That makes total sense, Scott, I was
Speaker 2: actually talking with so much of it makes sense. But
Speaker 2: I think, you know, I started this show truly because
Speaker 2: I needed advice for myself. I needed people to tell
Speaker 2: me that they had gone through something, and I needed
Speaker 2: to hear examples so that I could see examples of
Speaker 2: how to move forward.
Speaker 1: Because I had nothing to cling on to. I didn't
Speaker 1: know how to do it. And the more people I
Speaker 1: talked to interviewing this show, it really feels like the
Speaker 1: ones who feel the most centered are people that have
Speaker 1: some kind of spiritual practice about them and I have none.
Speaker 2: That I am the least zen, least meditative. Like I
Speaker 2: do everything wrong. It's not wrong, it's not wrong, it's
Speaker 2: not wrong. Well, I mean, I there, I look at
Speaker 2: my phone in the middle of the night, like I did.
Speaker 2: I don't drink water in the morning. I drink like
Speaker 2: like seven shots of espresso. Like I feel like I
Speaker 2: tried drinking water, drinking water. Tweakers start there, drinking water, meditating,
Speaker 2: putting your phone on, do not disturb, face down on
Speaker 2: your bedside table, prayer, just even closing your eyes and breathing.
Speaker 1: Have you tried none of no, none of them? But
Speaker 1: it's scared, Like I just I don't think, I know,
Speaker 1: I have not really tried. Okay, I have not really
Speaker 1: done it, but I feel like what's going to end
Speaker 1: up being like the season finale of the show was
Speaker 1: like season twenty five, and I like, successfully make it
Speaker 1: through like two minutes of meditating or something like that,
Speaker 1: Like it's going to take me twenty five years to
Speaker 1: get that's okay, that's like clearly the message I'm getting.
Speaker 2: You're always yeah. Well for me, I was never into meditating.
Speaker 2: And then I remember living. I was like it was
Speaker 2: like my single year. It was twenty fifteen before I
Speaker 2: met my husband. I had my pug. We were living
Speaker 2: on Hudson Street in the West Village, and I remember
Speaker 2: I started listening to the city. Oh my god. I
Speaker 2: was like down the street from Gerry Brodhaw's in the
Speaker 2: old house, loving my life, and I remember feeling I
Speaker 2: would call it the spin, like the spin of just
Speaker 2: even like living in this city alone. I remember my
Speaker 2: trainer being like be be, like you got to start
Speaker 2: saying no, you know, but I just couldn't. I just
Speaker 2: said yes to everything, and I had to learn how
Speaker 2: to say no. I had to stop the spin, the
Speaker 2: spin of everything coming at us so quickly, whether it's
Speaker 2: social media, whether it's people who we love or maybe
Speaker 2: we don't love who keep texting us? People pulling on
Speaker 2: us schedules, were kids, whatever it is. I had to
Speaker 2: find a way to like stop the spin because I
Speaker 2: could feel it, you know, in my body. I was
Speaker 2: like walking crooked. I like had the best chiropractor because
Speaker 2: I would see him all the time. We became fast
Speaker 2: friends because my neck was one way, and then like
Speaker 2: it was affecting my spinal whatever, and then my eyeballs,
Speaker 2: and then I was like light sensitive and I'm sitting
Speaker 2: under lights every day. And then oh, by the way,
Speaker 2: like I'm on the floor like because my back is out,
Speaker 2: and you know, your body, you know, Besil vander Kolk,
Speaker 2: like your body keeps a score. It's so true. Like
Speaker 2: it was all manifesting in my body, and so I
Speaker 2: needed like this was like a nine to one to
Speaker 2: one situation. I had to figure out, like what the
Speaker 2: fuck was wrong with my body? And so I started
Speaker 2: going within. So when I was you know, still very
Speaker 2: much at CNN and the swirl, I that's when I
Speaker 2: started meditating.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a short break for some ads.
Speaker 2: Now back to the show. Okay, So what was the
Speaker 2: first professional step that you took after this, like you
Speaker 2: ended up on Netflix, You've done such cool stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 2: just going through this personal journey, Like how did you
Speaker 2: know that you were ready to take a professional step.
Speaker 2: I mean, I love work. I'm like you, I'm like,
Speaker 2: why am I not working every day, all the time,
Speaker 2: all at once? You know, like I was ready, it
Speaker 2: was more difficult to sit back and just pause to
Speaker 2: take you know, as my friend Jen says her, you
Speaker 2: know she took the sacred pause. I was taking my
Speaker 2: sacred pause. I mean, I'd been working for twenty plus years.
Speaker 2: I had taken two two week vacations in twenty years,
Speaker 2: one to climb out Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, and wanted to
Speaker 2: get married. And that was it. That was it, Like
Speaker 2: we are all are hustlers, and so I took a
Speaker 2: big old pause. And then I remember I the summer
Speaker 2: after I left CNN, I booked myself a one way
Speaker 2: ticket to Los Angeles and I took what I referred
Speaker 2: to as my wisdom tour. All the people who I
Speaker 2: had interviewed or places or things that I was interested in.
Speaker 2: I just called people up and wanted a meeting. Like
Speaker 2: in LA It's very like, let's take a meeting. So
Speaker 2: I was like, let's take a meeting. It's not lunch
Speaker 2: or breakfast, it's let's take a meeting. So I took
Speaker 2: a lot of meetings and filled my brain with information.
Speaker 2: And then at the time, too was still like working
Speaker 2: off of you know, Huddle, my book and doing a
Speaker 2: lot of speaking for Huddle, which was awesome, you know,
Speaker 2: and being able to post pandemic, being able to show
Speaker 2: up in ballrooms and talk to women in person is
Speaker 2: like one of my absolute favorite things to do. And
Speaker 2: then I actually had come up with this idea for
Speaker 2: a TV series, an unscripted TV series, and had was
Speaker 2: working with a like an a squad production company, and
Speaker 2: we developed this whole thing. I threw all of myself
Speaker 2: in it in twenty twenty two and got turned down
Speaker 2: by everyone I pitched it too, which was earth shattering.
Speaker 2: And by the end of twenty twenty two, I was
Speaker 2: like with Stacy London and Jill Lindsay and Christine Joy
Speaker 2: standing in Temple Bar, like weeping into my champagne and
Speaker 2: wondering like I was like ringing in another new year
Speaker 2: and not totally knowing what I was going to be doing.
Speaker 2: And then got the Netflix call and that was awesome,
Speaker 2: but like, how like how get what was the call?
Speaker 2: Who called my calls? My agent at the time gave
Speaker 2: me an email heads up that Netflix was looking for
Speaker 2: journalists former journalists to host some of their unscripted shows.
Speaker 2: And I was kind of like, okay, that's cool, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: I remember, you know, god rest Is Sully was such
Speaker 2: a bad ass. Anthony Bourdaine. I remember when Tony Bourdin
Speaker 2: was doing so much work for us a CNN. He
Speaker 2: started taking me under his wing. We had coffees. You know.
Speaker 2: I was interested in this unscripted television in the series Space,
Speaker 2: and so I was like, cool, cool, cool, I'm in,
Speaker 2: I'm down. I'll take a zoom. Absolutely, And so then
Speaker 2: I had my first zoom with Netflix. It was Rich
Speaker 2: and Annie. They work in casting at Netflix. And you know,
Speaker 2: there's actually something really amazing. By getting turned down so
Speaker 2: many times and it being like nearly the holidays, I
Speaker 2: just had like zero fucks. I sat on the zoom.
Speaker 2: I put my hair on the top of my head.
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm putting on I'm like powdering my
Speaker 2: nose and putting some sheer lip gloss on, and that's
Speaker 2: what we're going to call it a day, and the
Speaker 2: two of them just sort of spoke to me and
Speaker 2: we talked about They were very like vague around what
Speaker 2: the show would be. I think they just wanted to
Speaker 2: like see what I was, like, Was I like serious
Speaker 2: news anchor lady or did I know how to be myself?
Speaker 2: And I told them crazy stories of being in the field,
Speaker 2: you know, as a correspondent, and you know, I was like, listen,
Speaker 2: like being in reality sheet TV is not totally dissimilar
Speaker 2: to being you know, thrust into a crazy scene and
Speaker 2: having to find your way, find your story. And so
Speaker 2: I had no idea, Like I finished the zoom and
Speaker 2: I was like, I don't know if I'm ever going
Speaker 2: to hear from them again. And then that led to
Speaker 2: another zoom with the showrunner who used to work in news.
Speaker 2: So we sort of had this shorthand which led to
Speaker 2: another zoom when I was celebrating my brother's fortieth birthday
Speaker 2: in the Bahamas and I was like, y'all, just a
Speaker 2: second for that cocktail. I'm gonna go sit in this.
Speaker 2: I'ma sit in my hotel room and take the zoom
Speaker 2: with like this top executive in Netflix, and you know,
Speaker 2: had this whole conversation with him again got off into
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two. Had no idea, but.
Speaker 1: Were you feeling like were you feeling excited about it?
Speaker 1: Or you were just kind of like this is so
Speaker 1: weird and random, let's just keep taking these calls.
Speaker 2: I think both. First of all, it's Netflix, so like,
Speaker 2: how cool is that in like two hundred eighty countries,
Speaker 2: Like that would be so amazing to just be part
Speaker 2: of their family. I was so I was excited about that.
Speaker 2: I didn't totally know what the show was. I was
Speaker 2: getting a little bit about it, but more or less
Speaker 2: it was just like a get to know you and
Speaker 2: see who I am. And at this point, because I
Speaker 2: talked so much about being out of alignment, I just
Speaker 2: made it really clear and I would say this. I
Speaker 2: would actually like say the silently to myself whenever, whether
Speaker 2: it was a zoom or a meeting I would take
Speaker 2: mostly in Los Angeles. I'd just be like, let me
Speaker 2: be my most, be let me like shine my brightest
Speaker 2: in this meeting. And you know what, like if they
Speaker 2: don't like who they see, which is my total, full
Speaker 2: big self, then like cool, they've done me a favor.
Speaker 2: Like I'll know you know, and I'm not no longer
Speaker 2: going to try to be who mold myself where the
Speaker 2: things as I think the person wants me to be.
Speaker 2: It's just exhausting and I'm over that. So I just
Speaker 2: knew that I showed up as myself, and you know,
Speaker 2: I was excited, but also like what could I be
Speaker 2: getting myself into? I didn't totally know. And then you know,
Speaker 2: I got the call like two days before I went
Speaker 2: to Hoffman when I was in northern California after the holidays.
Speaker 1: Oh so by the time you went to the Hoffman Institute,
Speaker 1: you knew you.
Speaker 2: Were going to do the show at the other I did.
Speaker 2: I just no. In fact, I remember like going over
Speaker 2: the Golden gate Bridge like face timing with something like
Speaker 2: a dear friend of mine telling them this news, telling
Speaker 2: them that I would be in this you know, that
Speaker 2: this was something that would be happening for me, which
Speaker 2: was so incredibly exciting at this point, like bananas exciting.
Speaker 2: And then I went in like turned over my electronics
Speaker 2: for seven days and then like worked on myself and
Speaker 2: all the things within me, and then you know, came
Speaker 2: out and was ready to like prep for the show.
Speaker 1: But what of mindset like, I feel like I've gone
Speaker 1: through different different phases of my life. When I've had
Speaker 1: a new opportunity, I felt like, Okay, this is the
Speaker 1: new me, Hello new men. In other phases, I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: we'll try it. I don't know, we'll see, Like, how
Speaker 1: are you thinking about it? I was just fully me.
Speaker 2: I remember like when I went on my wisdom tour
Speaker 2: in La I purposely showed up wearing like air jordans
Speaker 2: and jeans every meeting. I was like, I was totally
Speaker 2: rebelling from my like heels and you know, pastel colored
Speaker 2: TV anchor dresses to like the most streetwear me possible,
Speaker 2: because I wanted to see if someone liked me, not
Speaker 2: necessarily for what I was wearing or how I was rolling,
Speaker 2: but for what came out of my mouth and brain,
Speaker 2: then they would be worthy of hiring me and vice versa.
Speaker 2: That's how I came to see it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I bet that actually really attracted them to
Speaker 1: you because they knew that like this was you, and
Speaker 1: they knew they were getting someone who was confident they are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which I feel like people don't realize how much that
Speaker 1: attracts others to them. Yes, yes, So how long did
Speaker 1: you have before you started filming, like tell us the
Speaker 1: logistics of how it worked.
Speaker 2: Okay, So I found out I I was going to
Speaker 2: host this show in December of twenty twenty two. I
Speaker 2: go away the holidays, et cetera. I come back in
Speaker 2: my marriage January. So therein that begins that challenging process.
Speaker 2: Then February I get flown out to Los Angeles to
Speaker 2: go meet these people. I'll be working with the people
Speaker 2: who came up with the show, the show runner, the
Speaker 2: whole the production team. So I meet them in February,
Speaker 2: and by this point I've got like a decent grasp
Speaker 2: as to what the show the trust is about. And
Speaker 2: then I fly to the Dominican Republic where we shot it.
Speaker 2: I want to say like something like March. First, I
Speaker 2: think I had been given more or less baseball cards
Speaker 2: of the contestants, maybe within the last week or two,
Speaker 2: which is you know, I'm used to like waking up
Speaker 2: and finding out what I'm covering for the day of
Speaker 2: the morning of, so this is like plenty of lead time.
Speaker 2: This is also not you know, Prime Minister. This is
Speaker 2: a human who wants to win a bunch of money.
Speaker 2: So it's like a different, you know, different challenge and
Speaker 2: then I really just kind of like win into it.
Speaker 2: Not fully blindly, but I think one of the things
Speaker 2: I actually really what made me good at my job
Speaker 2: or anyone doing live television is you have to be
Speaker 2: able to pivot live. You have to be able to
Speaker 2: like zigzag. And so when we would have these challenges
Speaker 2: on the show, I was able to, like, as we
Speaker 2: used to say, throw out the rundown, we would we
Speaker 2: could zig zag, yeah, roll with it, And did you
Speaker 2: have to film like all night long? Like it looked
Speaker 2: very dark? It was dark A lot we would we
Speaker 2: would have so so that was the hardest part for me,
Speaker 2: by the way, staying up all night. It wasn't no,
Speaker 2: it wasn't all night, but they would be they would say, Okay, Brook,
Speaker 2: we need you. This is all so new for me.
Speaker 2: Like they were like, okay, we need you to come
Speaker 2: to set at nine, ten eleven in the morning. We're
Speaker 2: going to shoot v We're going to shoot like a
Speaker 2: daytime challenge and then a night time trust ceremony. But
Speaker 2: then it would be like a lot of downtime in between.
Speaker 2: But I would have to stay, you know, nearby, so
Speaker 2: I would roll up I had, like you know, I
Speaker 2: would get all done and then it was a lot
Speaker 2: of hurry up and wait, and then the brains behind
Speaker 2: the show would come and find me and be like,
Speaker 2: all right, Brook today, here's what we're going to be doing,
Speaker 2: and this is more or less what you're going to
Speaker 2: relate to the contestants, and this is what we're interested in,
Speaker 2: but we have no idea how it's going to go.
Speaker 2: And I was like, okay, cool, cool cool. So then
Speaker 2: I would show up and you know, they would yell,
Speaker 2: we would I would see the contestants, I got to
Speaker 2: know them, and we would finish like I think the
Speaker 2: latest day was probably like midnight, maybe just maybe midnight,
Speaker 2: So it wasn't crazy, but it was a lot of
Speaker 2: like concentrated shooting for I want to say, like twenty
Speaker 2: one days. It was like no days off. Yeah, work, work, work,
Speaker 2: and then peace out. But so you did get to
Speaker 2: know them. You're saying like did you have interactions with
Speaker 2: them off camera? Like how much did you know there
Speaker 2: was a lot of like backroom dealing going on, Like
Speaker 2: how much did you know about that? Like what do
Speaker 2: you mean backroom dealing of the contestants with one another? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a great question. I only saw them when I
Speaker 2: went to set, like I met them as the audience
Speaker 2: met them on camera, you know, or when I would
Speaker 2: see them for a challenge, the cameras would be rolling,
Speaker 2: and then when it would we would have time to
Speaker 2: maybe break for something else, you know. I would chat
Speaker 2: with him briefly, but really I tried to stay agnostic
Speaker 2: and out of it so that I could come in
Speaker 2: and genuinely be objective. And I mean it's hard to
Speaker 2: like not have favorites once you sort of see how
Speaker 2: how they are, just even on camera. Really, I got
Speaker 2: to know them in our back and forth, so that
Speaker 2: the trust ceremonies, you know, on the cliff, because we
Speaker 2: would chat for quite a while. But I didn't know
Speaker 2: a lot of what was happening in the house. In fact,
Speaker 2: like I when I watched the show with everyone else,
Speaker 2: I saw a fan, I saw a lot of things.
Speaker 2: I didn't even know what was happening in the house,
Speaker 2: which is super wild, and like it made me love
Speaker 2: and not love like some people even more, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but if you were shooting for twenty one days and
Speaker 2: you were trying to keep a little distance from the contestants.
Speaker 1: How lowly was that for you? I mean, I'm a talker.
Speaker 1: I could not go twenty one days without talking.
Speaker 2: Well, Lean Gray was my stylist and he was my
Speaker 2: best friend, and so we hung out all the time.
Speaker 2: So between between between no, seriously between Leon, between some
Speaker 2: of the Netflix folks who stayed with us in the
Speaker 2: hotel and you know, friends I would FaceTime with. It
Speaker 2: wasn't lonely. It was just a lot of you know,
Speaker 2: I was like very caught up on the news when
Speaker 2: I was there because there was a lot of time
Speaker 2: to sit and read or but like I was getting
Speaker 2: coconuts and eating chocolate. I'm like, I'm not complaining. It
Speaker 2: was amazing. I'm great like by myself, you know, like
Speaker 2: put me by the pool if I've got to like
Speaker 2: kick it for two hours, you know, like I won't
Speaker 2: have my makeup melt off. But it was it was great.
Speaker 2: So do you feel like this is the new book,
Speaker 2: like now you are the strategy show host? Yes and no.
Speaker 2: I think that this is one of my lanes. I
Speaker 2: think that I have like a full spectrum of Okay,
Speaker 2: I can totally host reality TV. And when I say that,
Speaker 2: like asterisk footnote. I want to do like smart, strategic,
Speaker 2: you know, sort of reality that's you know, I'm interested
Speaker 2: in humanity and how people like wrestle with things like
Speaker 2: greed or trust or what or I mean I said
Speaker 2: to Netflix, like, I don't know if I want to
Speaker 2: host like a dating show, but yes, I would totally
Speaker 2: do that because it was so fun and I missed fun.
Speaker 2: I missed smiling on TV. My mom used to text
Speaker 2: me at CNN and she'd be like, are you smiling today?
Speaker 2: And I'm like, Mom, that's the pandemic and like people are, no,
Speaker 2: I'm not. So my mom was really happy to watch
Speaker 2: this trust, which she has watched two times now. And
Speaker 2: then you know, I've got other things that I'm up to.
Speaker 2: So it's nice to be able to like check various
Speaker 2: boxes of my own interests. So it's not just one
Speaker 2: thing like I want to be a multi hyphen it
Speaker 2: what is one low that you thought, I'm not sure
Speaker 2: I'm going to get out of this, But now in.
Speaker 1: Retrospect, you see it actually really launched you to where
Speaker 1: you are now.
Speaker 2: That's easy. I was twenty eight, twenty nine. I had
Speaker 2: just moved to Atlanta from Washington, d C. CNN said
Speaker 2: they were going to let me freelance as a correspondent.
Speaker 2: I had just found out I got cheated on by
Speaker 2: my longtime boyfriend. My parents decided that after forty years,
Speaker 2: they were going to get divorced. And then I get
Speaker 2: to Atlanta and CNN is like, hey, just kidding. It's
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight, great recession. We're freezing all our positions.
Speaker 2: So I move into my childhood bedroom. Okay, wow, and
Speaker 2: then I move in with my cheating boyfriend because that
Speaker 2: is the best option of all three at the time.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, there's so much more of that story.
Speaker 2: But that could be for the for uh should that
Speaker 2: be like our part two? This would be part two.
Speaker 2: That to be part two. I feel like it's part two.
Speaker 2: But that was pretty that was pretty low, like I
Speaker 2: was when it rains a purse, you know. I ended
Speaker 2: up like working two days a week as CNN International overnights,
Speaker 2: living with the cheater, just wondering like what had happened
Speaker 2: with my life? Yeah? Not good? Oh my god, Well, Brooke,
Speaker 2: I can't wait for part two. Thank you Thank you
Speaker 2: so much for joining us, Thank you.
Speaker 1: So much, so happy, thank you, thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this candid convo episode of she Pivots.
Speaker 1: Check back in weekly for more conversations with inspiring women.
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