Exclusive: Speaking With Jemele Hill and Cari Champion On Their Vice Talk Show - ‘Cari & Jemele: Stick To Sports’
Premiering this Wednesday, August 19 on Vice is the new series Cari & Jemele: Stick To Sports, a weekly nightly talk show hosted by Jemele Hill and Cari Champion. The show aims to unpack the biggest topics and headlines of the week from the worlds of culture, politics, sports and business.
Hill and Champion both worked years at ESPN, where the former worked on “The Undefeated,” “SportsCenter” and “His & Hers” and the latter held anchoring duties on “SportsCenter,” “SportsNation” and “First Take.”
BlackFilmandTV.com spoke with Hill and Champion about the series and being the first talk show with two Black women hosting.
How long were you guys talking about this before the show finally came to fruition?
Jemele Hill: When it came to Vice in particular, the conversation started and in the spring, but the idea of us doing the show started before then. Cari basically bullied me into doing this. We had done some things on social media. We did some things together on ESPN, and so we always knew that we had a unique chemistry that would translate well to on-camera, but the timing wasn't quite right. I left ESPN before Cari did. I was doing my own thing and the timing became obviously right once she left. It made a lot of sense then to start pursuing this as a real viability.
As the two of you were putting this together and knowing that was rarely, if ever, a show with two Black women as the hosts, were there any challenges?
Cari Champion: No, not at all. We felt like it was about time. What we realized is that we have very many worlds that we can live in. We're not just talking heads for sports. People love to put people in compartments and place them in certain boxes and say that's what they do. Everyone can be so much and we've lived their different lives and work in very many ways in different positions and all executed the reality that we knew that we could communicate certain stories, certain topics, certain ideas, and certain issues. As a result, this show for us wasn't like “Wow, two black women leading the discussion?” It was like, “Finally, two black woman leading a show based on opinions and their experiences." It shouldn't be so uncommon, it should be common.
That is the beauty of what it is, being the first, which we've been in all our lives. All of those things are great in terms of titles and accomplishments, but it's time to make it more common and more known. Black women have been the heartbeat of society for so long. That’s been the way since the beginning of time, if you want to look back at the civil rights movement. I never hear any stories about what Coretta (Scott King) had to deal with. We know about her book and how she handled being Martin Luther King Jr's wife. I'm sure it wasn't easy and the same for all the other wives of these great civil rights leaders who helped us get to this level where we are now. It should be talked about. It should be celebrated, and it should be protected. That’s the most important thing.
Will this be a series where the topics that you guys discuss are natural? Or is it going to be something discussed before you get on air?
Jemele Hill: The conversations won't be scripted. This is just our natural way with each other. Like any other show, you have to plot out a rundown, figure out what we're going to talk about. We’re not going to rehearse conversation beforehand. We've never done that in our careers. It wouldn't even make any sense to do that now
How many shows are you doing per week?
Cari Champion: We're doing one show a week. It’s a weekly talk show for now. Our philosophy going into it was just to make it tight and right before we hit you with everything. I'm a believer in quality over quantity and Jemele agrees with me as does Vice, which was a perfect marriage. In 30 minutes, we want to leave you wanting more and asking for more and curious about more.
Will the show bring in something new or have your opinions on what the rest of the world is talking about?
Cari Champion: There's a certain unavoidable topics that we have to address because we’re less than 90 days before a presidential election. Clearly politics. With Kamala Harris being a vice presidential nominee, those will be significant evergreen topics that we will have to discuss because they’re relevant. They’re hot topics. We have very nuanced and different opinions about those issues. The way we look at the show is that (1) people have to buy into our relationship and understanding that our friendship is a lens. We should discuss many of these other things much like a lot of people in their own friendships. They discuss politics, news, pop culture, all those kind of things. We want to talk about what we're passionate about, what's important to us, what's important to our community and what's going on in the world.
We're trained journalists. It is in our nature to talk about things that are important and relevant and current. We're not shock jocks. We’re not people who say shit just to say it. We like to think that we bring some critical thinking, some nuances, some perspective to it. I'm sure any talk show host that you talk to feels like that they're bringing something different to the table and we're no different from that. The fact is in the late night space, you don't really have two black women in that having that relationship conversation show. That in itself makes it different. Two black women who are journalists, who have a background in sports, but have certainly covered news and politics and other things and have very unique lived experiences. So all of that, you put it in a pot and it's some icy but very good gumbo.
How did Vice get in the mix?
Cari Champion: I thought it was destined. Initially we thought it would be a podcast, maybe we give it to Quibi. Maybe we'd give it to one of the streaming services. We hadn't pulled the trigger. Both of us were reaching out to different people we knew, but we were doing it very casually since we had already shot a pilot. A mutual friend of ours, had a friend at Vice. Then once they started to talk to us, my friend says, "they're probably going to want to move quickly." She was like, "oh, by quickly, it's like yesterday." That's exactly what happened. We had no idea but we liked where we found ourselves because we thought it makes perfect sense. They are very like minded. They were very similar to our point of view. They knew what we wanted to do, and they were in agreement with us. And so it was a very, very happy marriage in the sense of we needed to be someplace that gave us the executive producer freedom, which we have on the show. We're both executive producers. That gave us the freedom to be creative, to be who we are. That's the best way you can get television, from your talent for the people you work with. If you allow them to really truly be them both.
I would have some of the best shows on television and it's just a result of that person or those people being themselves. I refer to Inside The NBA with Chuck and Kenny and Ernie and Shaq. They're all their own individual. They're individually themselves. They are not micromanage. They have a certain freedom to express themselves. Right or wrong, they have to deal with the good and bad, as we are both prepared to do because we know this show will make some people uncomfortable. And I know some of the things we say agree or disagree will make people uncomfortable for the simple fact that it's coming from a woman's mouth, a black woman's mouth with authority and competence and all of that is is unheard of. We have to be okay with the end results and Vice has been able to support us in that way. It’s thus far, a great marriage.
Do you think this will open the minds of other producers, networks, and other platforms to start looking at two black women as hosts?
Jemele Hill: Of course. It's been attempted in very lackluster ways without effort on the conservative side.People will most definitely say okay, it can work quite because it's about how you present the information and right now, there is an incredible interest in what is going on in the black community and women of color community for black woman, and you want to be able to have a voice that understand all levels. We've been in the spaces where we worked in corporate America. We still have business dealings and we're entrepreneurs. We are talent. We're hired. We live in all of these worlds. We're just like everybody else trying to find our faith, like our freedom, if you will, and use our words, use our talent, use our visibility and our platforms for the greater good. You'll be able to see that because there's authenticity and to me that's just unmatched, and it's a recipe for success.
There have been iterations like 2 Dope Queens and small things like that from the entertainment world, but for what we're doing, I don't think there is. It's a different space not just to see two black women but just being on late night is not something that you rarely see. The last thing I can think of is the Robin Thede Show that she had on BET, but she was in late night. So it's just traditionally not a space that we have been in, in this capacity. That's an important historical marker and while it should not take us for some people to be courageous enough to give black women a show, or put them in this kind of position, but if that happens as a byproduct, of course we welcome that.