Then they went to town on me, determining my appeal. The big takeaways were that I was sunny, funny, and smart, which became our mantra.
It was a little weird. With the TODAY show, I just kind of came on, and people responded. Here, there was product-testing. It didn’t feel organic. At a certain point Jeff made a huge push to bring on Allison Gollust. When we worked together at NBC, she and Jeff cooked up ever bolder ways to draw attention to TODAY and later to Jeff himself when he moved to Entertainment. They were joined at the hip. The problem was, we’d already hired a PR person for the show. There really wasn’t a role for Allison.
Jeff asked me to meet with her anyway.
One weekend when I was out in the Hamptons, I went over to her house and told her what I’d already told Jeff—that we had the communications piece of it covered and there just wasn’t a job there. What we needed were talented producers. ABC was paying Jeff and me a ton of money; I was also an EP of the show, and my name was on it. I felt a certain responsibility to spend the money wisely and have some real agency in the decision-making.
I had to wonder why Jeff was angling so hard to bring Allison on board. She and her husband and kids had moved into the apartment right above Jeff and Caryn’s—everyone who heard about the cozy arrangement thought it was super-strange. By that point, Caryn had become a close friend and it made me really uncomfortable.
“I don’t want to force myself on you,” Allison said reasonably that day in the Hamptons. She seemed disappointed, but that was the end of it. （Sort of. Not really.）
IN AUGUST, WITH our debut less than a month away, the marketing team rolled out a promo we’d shot around the city. It featured me passing out invitations to my new show—to ladies in a nail salon, to a crossing guard, to a class full of women doing yoga （I carefully inserted the invite between their toes as they executed their down-dog splits）。 Not real women in a nail salon or a yoga class, mind you, but actors they had cast. At one point I had to call in a favor from none other than Donald Trump to help us get a permit so we could shoot part of this thing in Central Park.
The idea was that we were introducing viewers to a lighter, more accessible side of me, which is what daytime TV called for. But the music, the mood, my face, my voice are all so relentlessly chirpy—watching it now makes me cringe. At the time, I put my trust in the promotional team. They understood that audience better than I did; I figured they knew how to position me. My mandate was to be warm, friendly, welcoming. It wasn’t at all clear how that would square with the other side of me—the inquisitive, skeptical side. I felt a serious identity crisis coming on.
In the plus column, Sheryl Crow agreed to write and record the theme song. I went down to her home in Nashville and we played around in her recording studio. I told her I wanted the song to be upbeat and fun, and she delivered, with lyrics that hit the personal-growth note at the core of a lot of daytime programming. The only problem was a chorus lyric she’d written, Are you ready for today?—which called to mind another TV show entirely. So Sheryl changed it to Are you ready for this day?
Jeff sent me an idea for the open of the first show that involved a Matt Lauer cameo. I emailed him back:
Funny. would get a lot of buzz. He’s kind of a pussy so probably won’t do it though.
Jeff’s response:
right, i agree with u
but i am willing to ask him
just wanted to make sure ur comfy with it
Surprisingly, after spurning our advances twice, Matt agreed to do the spot.
Cold open. The sound of crickets. A shot of me in a twin bed wearing monogrammed pajamas, tossing and turning. Then, suddenly, my eyes pop open.
“Wow, I just had the weirdest dream! I had a dream I left the TODAY show to anchor an evening news broadcast and I did it for five years. And then I dreamed I was going to be hosting my own daytime talk show…”
At which point, in the twin bed next to mine, Matt, also in monogrammed pj’s, rolls over, takes off his eye mask, and says, “That was no dream. And the talk show? It starts right now. So are you ready for this day?”
Cue the theme song:
I woke up to a new dawn breaking
You were on my mind
So many roads still worth taking
There’s no more wasting time…
Are you ready for this day-ay-ay-ay-ay…
I’ll never forget walking out onto that stage, greeting a live audience. They were standing, applauding wildly—they all looked so happy, like a casting call for Up with People （they’d been instructed by the audience coordinator to wear bright colors）。 Apart from greeting viewers on the plaza at TODAY, interacting with a live audience wasn’t something I’d really done in my career as a journalist. I didn’t know what to do with all that over-the-top energy. So I made these crunched little hand-puppet waves at the audience and smiled right back. It didn’t come naturally.