NEW HORIZONS
A Goddess and a Girlfriend By Ca ro l Bada r acco Padge t t
When she speaks with celebs they open up to her as if she were a trusted girlfriend. And for her own part, she holds nothing back. “
M y mind went blank. I cried tears of joy. Of relief. But honestly, it was a real lesson in surrender for me.” That’s how the first Black female host of CBS’s Entertainment Tonight , Nischelle Turner, describes the moment she learned she would fill that role alongside co-host Kevin Frazier. And then she backs up to explain how she truly came to this point of surrender in the first place. The coveted job had been open for several years following the departure of ET host Nancy O’Dell. “I was told I was a candidate, and I believed I was the best person for the job, but time went by and people came in and out. And they didn’t make a move,” Turner says. And so she waited, the kind of waiting that every on- air talent, actor, or player in the entertainment industry knows firsthand. But waiting and guessing can be games that aren’t very fun to play. “I had to decide … maybe this won’t happen for me,” she says. “I had to make a choice about how to look at it. So I grieved this job during the pandemic, and I let it go.” So, Turner signed a new deal to continue as a correspondent at ET . And although it wasn’t “the” job— she decided she would dig in and blossom anyway. “I decided that I have to be the best version of me for me,” she says, adding, “If you’re not gonna build your castle over here you have to build it somewhere else.” With an attitude like this, it’s easy to understand why Turner got the ET host gig. In addition to possessing the glittering gusto of somebody who ought to be headlining the long-running entertainment talk show, she is a wizard at building rapport. When she speaks with celebs they open up to her as if she were a trusted girlfriend. And for her own part, she holds nothing back. This gift of complete authenticity is something she shares with and admires about Kelly Ripa of ABC’s Live with Kelly and Ryan .
“Kelly Ripa came on and made a mark and paved the way for a lot of women,” Turner notes. “And she’s a boss because she demanded the pay scale that she deserved.” But the air stills to a near-sacred hush when another groundbreaking female talk show host comes up: Oprah Winfrey. “Oprah changed the game. She’s my platinum standard. Nobody will ever do it again like her.” And yet, despite having role models at every turn—Gayle King at CBS This Morning and Robin Roberts of ABC’s Good Morning America ,” as she notes— Turner is a first in her own right at ET , and she fully appreciates that. “I’m part of a pantheon of firsts with people like that. My part is minuscule, but they gave me a road map for how to do it.” Before these stratospheric women in entertainment were paving the way for her, though, Turner had several other aces in the hole: no. 1, her
Nischelle Turner
Photo by Paul A. Hebert
fierce and fabulous role-model mother. And no. 2, the renowned University of Missouri School of Journalism in her hometown of Columbia, Missouri, where she received her BJ in 1998. When asked about the J School’s role in her development as a top-tier journalist, Turner states, “It was everything, you know? They make it so tough that they weed out people who don’t have a deep, honest love for journalism and storytelling.” Turner shares that through her hours on-air, as a student at KOMU-TV in Columbia, a dual NBC/CW+ affiliate allied with Mizzou’s Journalism School, she learned to genuinely pull for the up-and-comer. As such, she notes the progress that Atlanta has made in its meteoric rise as an entertainment force over the past 15 years. “Atlanta right now is the Hollywood of the South, and between Atlanta and Vancouver it’s top of the heap,”
Turner states. “Tyler Perry alone put Atlanta above where we thought it would be in terms of entertainment.” As for her next moves, Turner is focusing on the blessing of her ET co-host position and working on several other projects she has in the mix. She launched a podcast called The Big Podcast alongside Shaquille O’Neal, and her 10-episode CBS primetime series Secret Celebrity Renovation debuted this summer. Although the level and volume of work can make her days long and hectic, there’s a sense that ET ’s new face is supremely up to the task. After all, Turner’s first name, Nischelle, means “like God” in Hebrew. Or perhaps it’s more aptly, “like goddess.”
Catch Nischelle every night on ET . Check local listings. @entertainmenttonight
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