New York – While walking the few blocks from her Court TV office to a lunch interview, Star Jones was approached by a fan.
“You know, I think they should leave Barry Bonds alone,” the man volunteered.
Between bites of her salad a few minutes later, Jones can’t help but chuckle at this on-the-fly exchange about a record-breaking slugger who many believe has used steroids.
“I said, ‘I agree: They ought to prove it or shut up.”‘ Then, having reached the far corner, she and the stranger went their separate ways.
Clearly, Jones has a gift for connecting with people, and no shortage of opinions – as she is sure to demonstrate anew when she returns to daily television for the first time since exiting ABC’s “The View” more than a year ago. “Star Jones” premieres on Court TV on Monday at 1 p.m. MDT.
Her program, airing live each weekday, will be topical and news- driven, Jones says, with guests ranging from celebrities to ordinary people in timely situations. Legal issues and criminal justice will loom large, of course: Jones is an attorney and a former prosecutor who started in television as a commentator for Court TV in 1991, then became legal correspondent at NBC News.
Jones, 45, left “The View” on stormy terms in June 2006.
Having been told weeks earlier that her contract wouldn’t be renewed, she announced her looming departure on the air (while setting viewers straight that her departure wasn’t her choice).
Barbara Walters, caught by surprise, later claimed to feel “betrayed” by Jones’ outspokenness.
By then, her public image had taken a plunge – or so said the network’s audience research that led to her firing. Her extreme, and much-speculated-on, weight loss had become a cultural distraction.
There was also the matter of her uber-lavish wedding to banker Al Reynolds in November 2004. A topic of discussion long before and afterward (especially by Jones on “The View”), it undermined her down-to-earth appeal.
“I needed to go away for a bit,” she says, thinking back to last summer. “I also needed to acknowledge that I had lost the immediate connection that I had with my audience.
“It’s very rare in this world when you get two chances,” she says. “I’m a very lucky and blessed girl.” A second chance arose late last year when Court TV, engineering its own relaunch (including, come January 2008, a new name: truTV), proposed she join the network.
“I told them I don’t want to do screaming TV, fighting TV, insulting TV,” says Jones, “and I don’t want to do gossip.” She chuckles ruefully.
“The war and health care will be the two most important issues of the upcoming election,” Jones proposes, “and they were upstaged by Paris Hilton! It made me berserk not to be able to talk about that!”
She also wants to clear the air about the one thing she couldn’t bear to talk about before: the gastric bypass she underwent in August 2003, when her 5-foot-5 frame was packing 309 life-threatening pounds.
She says the shame and guilt attached to her physical state kept her from going public, even when she was called a hypocrite for not being her usual tell-all self.
“I have shared so many things with other people for the purpose of empowering them to feel good,” she concedes, “but this was something I had to get emotionally capable to talk about. The specifics of the weight loss finally freed me to be able to say, ‘I was afraid – like maybe you are too.”‘
