'The View' co-host says Meghan McCain was one of the first people to reach out to her.
Sunny Hostin is speaking her truth. ET's Nischelle Turner recently spoke with The View co-host about her new book, I Am These Truths -- which is out today -- and Hostin discussed the controversy in June when The Huffington Post reported that ABC executive Barbara Fedida called her "low rent" amid making other racist comments about some of her Black colleagues at the network.
Fedida has since been fired after an investigation was held. Hostin, a former federal prosecutor, actually addresses the incident in the foreword of her new book. She told ET that she was "sad" and "hurt" by the comments.
"I have fought social justice issues on behalf of other people for a really long time and I've been an advocate for other people for a really long time," she says. "But for some reason, it shook me to my core to realize that all those little thoughts I had in my head, like, 'Wow, I feel like I'm being treated a little differently and I feel like maybe it's because of my race, and I feel like maybe I'm being discriminated against, and maybe I'm being paid less too,' I kept on pushing it back and it all came crashing down."
"And then when there was an investigation, it was confirmed, I thought, you know, I've got to write about this," she continues. "I've got a book coming out. And the book had already gone to the publisher. And I called my agent and I said, 'I've got to write about this and I want it to be at the very beginning of the book. Because this is my truth as I sit here today. ... Because this is the truth that I'm living right now. And if that's gonna help any woman, help anybody that's going through this during this time in our country, I gotta do it.' And he said, 'You better do it.' And I literally wrote that foreword in about 15 to 20 minutes."
Hostin said ABC wanted to edit out "truthful things that happened" to her in her book, but she got a lawyer to fight for her and won. However, she noted that she's now seeing "real change" at the network.
"It's been a wonderful thing to see people held accountable for this kind of behavior, because you usually don't see that," she explains.
Hostin also revealed the reaction of her children -- her son, Gabriel, and her daughter, Paloma -- to the hurtful comments.
"So, I realized I did have to have that discussion and they know me as this big mama bear," she shares. "Anyone says anything about them, I'm like the number one person ready to fight for them. And I spoke to them about what was probably going to be this firestorm, which it certainly turned out to be, and my son's reaction was so odd. He was like, 'Why would anyone say that about you?' You know, he was sort of stunned. My daughter, again, the person she is, was sort of like, 'Don’t believe that, that’s not who you are.' They are certainly the people I raised them to be so they are activists in their own right, they know their value, they know their worth, and I'm ecstatic about that."
Hostin says her fellow View co-hosts -- which includes Meghan McCain, Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar -- also had her back when the report first came to light.
"Oh, Meghan has been very supportive. She was one of the first people who reached out to me when the article came out," she reveals. "Every single host called me. Spoke to me. Rallied around me. Former hosts called me. Almost every single one of them. It really is a family on that show."
As for her and her co-hosts' sometimes tense fights on air, she says that at the end of the day, they are still a family.
"We are like any other family, you know, because we work together, we're together sometimes even more than we are with our own families and we are talking about things on the show that people aren't even supposed to talk about politely behind closed doors," she notes. "And we're talking about them in a heated way in front of three million people every day. .... We're all really opinionated and passionate about different things and usually I'm the opposite side of it so of course we, you know, go at it, and sometimes the feelings spill over to the next day and the next day and the next day, but any one of us will tell you that we are, at the core, friends and colleagues."
Meanwhile, for more on season 24 of The View, watch the video below.
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