Nischelle Turner named as 1st Black woman co-host on ‘ET’
“Entertainment Tonight” can’t be considered “entertainment too white” any longer.
Nischelle Turner has officially been named as co-host of the longrunning, mainstream entertainment newsmagazine show, making her the first Black woman to sit in the anchor chair.
The CBS-owned show announced
March 18 that the fourtime Emmy Award winner will co-host the nightly broadcast alongside Kevin Frazier, who is also Black.
“Nischelle can do it all,” executive producer Erin Johnson said. “She can go from a heartfelt conversation with Oscar winner Viola Davis about the impact of Cicely Tyson to singing karaoke on a balcony with Jimmy Fallon. She is warm, thoughtful, and full of energy.”
“Celebrities respect her skills as a seasoned journalist, and our audience has taken notice of her fun chemistry with Kevin [Frazier],” she added. “There is no one more deserving to lead ‘ET’ in our history making 40th season and beyond.”
“I’ve known this news for a couple weeks and have been thinking of what to say when it was released,” Turner, 46, wrote in an Instagram post March 18, saying thank you and paying homage to the many Black woman who came before her and still work in broadcast television, including Carole Simpson, Oprah Winfrey, Pat Harvey, Gayle King, Hota Kotb, Robin Roberts, Tamron Hall and Joy Reid.
She even gave a nod to Mary Hart, who hosted the popular series from 1982-2011 “for building this genre” and thanked her predecessor Nancy
O’Dell “for setting the table.”
“My gratitude is deep and my commitment to representing is strong,” Turner concluded.
A graduate of the University of Missouri, Turner joined the show as a correspondent in 2014. She has served as the weekend cohost, and covered everything from award shows, to movie premieres to breaking news.
A respected entertainment news expert, she began her journalism career in 1998 as a reporter and fill-in anchor in Evansville, Indiana. Her credits also include work for “Good Day LA,” “Fox Sports” and entertainment segments for “CNN Newsroom,” “New Day” and “CNN Tonight.”
She even was featured on the longrunning CBS soap opera “The Young and the Restless.”