Michael Smith and Jemele Hill are now alumnus of their former ESPN 2 show, His & Hers as they will be taking their talents to Sportscenter to co-host The Six. They are bringing a whole new attitude with cool personalities to the ESPN brand with their style, love for music and their continuous talks and debates on issues going on in the world today. Hill and Smith signed multi-year deals to remain with ESPN last year. The two will start hosting on Monday at 6pm, (The Six).

The Source caught up with the two to speak on their transition to Sportscenter, what the move means to the black culture of sports and journalism, How Rob King surprised them with the idea, super bowl picks and much more.

 

First off, how excited are you guys to be moving to the ‘6pm slot on Sportscenter?

Jemele Hill— Excited, for me I guess at this moment its a combination of being excited and relieved because we’ve been in rehearsals doing all these promos, interviews and it’s kind of like I’m ready to get started more than anything. So, if I could sum up all three emotions it would be a combination of excited, relieved and a little bit anxious just because I’m so ready to go.

Michael Smith —- I’m getting a little nervous because of this commercial break every 5 minutes. Like every five minutes I look up I see are dumb butts dancing and I’m like yo we better make this show sting, because the hype is real. I mean we’ve done interview after interview all the promotions we used to privately complain from work over the years from the work we were doing is being made up for these last couple of weeks. From a solid month of the last ‘his & hers’ till the debut of ‘the six’ and we were like man what are we going to do for a month? I tell you what it’s flown by and we are excited, it’s been a long-time coming and the beauty of it is we already have a chemistry and a body of work already with one another. So were not going to necessarily struggle straight out the gate we should hit the ground running.

Are you guys going to miss ‘His and Hers’ ?

Hill—- I say no, it’s not like were becoming two different people and it’s not like were going to be on a show that will be much different from ‘his & hers’ it’s just going to be done on a grander scale and produced a little differently that’s it. So it’s hard for me to miss what I feel like is not gone.

Smith—- For me, I’m going to miss being the little show that could because we can no longer play the nobody believes in us card. Like we were always able to be just this underground act that had this small community of people and not to small we rated well a lot of people still watched us. But, we had this group of people that watched us and loved us and we were kind of like this grassroots show selling tapes out the trunk like we used to say and everybody else was getting commercials, not us we didn’t have commercials but we were still doing it.

We had the worst studio on campus, everyone else had these nice studios we were doing our show out of the closet and we were still making it work. So now we’re this big show and were on sportscenter we got commercials, contracts, budgets we got everything now so now it’s like it’s business and it’s more about having to validate it all. Where as before it was always about exceeding expectations and defying the odds. There’s some things about it that I’m going to miss, the innocence (Laughs).

 

Did you guys see the move coming or was it a surprise?

Hill—- This was not something remotely on our radar to do, we were more focused given that we were about a year and some change out from our contracts being up and we to be focused on returning back to ESPN. We were just focused on how we could put ‘His & Hers’ in the best position possible. So one day, Rob King he’s the executive that runs Sportscenter stopped us in the newsroom and said he had a crazy idea one that a lot of people around him said everyone said we would say ‘NO’ to and he made a pitch to us to do ‘The Six’ on a permanent bases as Co-host. We kinda laughed because we were thinking that he wanted us to be along the lines of traditional anchors and maybe do highlights on the Sportscenter show which is not what we do. He was like no we want you to do ‘His & Hers’ be who you guys are and bring all the same things from ‘His & Hers’ to sportscenter and that’s what peaked our interest and made it feel like it was the right move for us.

Smith—– It was never something that we conceptualized, Jemele and I both come from the newspaper world. Jemele started interning out the wound and we both met on a newspaper trail. I was at the Boston Globe to ESPN in ’04 she came from the Orlando Sentinel where she was a columnist. The only African American female sports columnist in the country at the time and that was ’06 when she came. So I bring that up to say when you’re in newspapers and the more fame you get the byline it’s not about being famous it’s about telling a story you kind of just keep your head down and you keep working and promotions are going to come you don’t necessarily go and solicit a promotion to a national writer or a columnist. You figure if you keep working hard enough and long enough one day you’ll get to be a columnist and get your face in the paper and you will get to express your opinion. So I say that to say we brought the same mentality to ESPN. We felt like if we just kept our head down and kept grinding and kept being the best that we could be everyday at Noon on ESPN 2.

The rest would take care of itself. But, we didn’t know what form, we was thinking maybe we would get a new time slot or move to ESPN 1 in front of more eyes. But, that wasn’t necessarily the end all for us either we had kind of given up on worrying about the time slot we figured that people would tune in. We felt that regardless of our time people would find us. But, we never thought for a second that we wold have our brand attached to the marquee brand at the company as a fond saying around here ‘Sportscenter keeps the lights on.”So, we never thought that we could go and host Sportscenter and still do what we do. We practically have worn every hat you could wear as an on-air talent at this company going on 13 years here and Jemele going on 10. We never saw ourselves as Sportscenter because while we were anchors we were host, we’re not traditional anchors and host we’re more talk show host with personality. So for them to see us as worthy of carrying on the tradition of Stuart Scott, John Sanders and Robin Roberts, Dan Patrick and on and on and on. For them to think we’re worthy enough to take care of their baby honestly, is a huge honor.

 

What are going to be the focuses on the set for the 6pm slot? More debates and highlights?

Hill—– If you watch ‘His & Hers’ you can basically expect that show it’ll be conversation and a news of the day show exactly like ‘His & Hers.’ Most importantly we intend to be ourselves and part of being ourselves we intend to have a lot of fun. Mike and I discuss issues but we don’t take ourselves too serious and I think that same spirit will be very prevalent at the essence of what we do at 6pm. So i’ll just say this as a tease before the beginning of the show, put it like this when you tune in at 6pm, February 6th you will know right away that this is a different kind of Sportscenter, just know you’ll know right away (laughs)

 

So you guys are bringing a whole new style to Sportscenter with your passion for music, movies, fashion and culture. Is their anything else you all would like to bring to Sportscenter that you feel is missing?

Smith—– We never did the show with any goal in mind, we never did the show thinking here’s what television needs or here’s what sports talk television needs. We never had that kind of ideal we weren’t out to change the game in fact little inside baseball off the ‘it takes two’ commercial at the end of it on the screen it says “we’re changing the game.” And we went back to the producers and we said can you change that because like were confident but we aren’t doing television upside down or backwards. So I’m saying this to say we aren’t going into this thinking we are going to reinvent Sportscenter or do something that’s never been done before. We are just being ourselves and if that’s something groundbreaking then, Great! We understand that a African American man and woman as equals is unprecedented in sports television and maybe in television in general when you talk about mainstream media.

We also understand the significance of our voices when it comes to matters of society, race and gender but we’re not going into it saying “Sportscenter’s been missing this, so we’re going to be the one’s to bring it.” We are going to be different because we are different and the way that we interact there’s never been a relationship like this on television. The closest thing is ‘Borris and Nicole’ they’re actually married (Laughs). But it’s like with Jemele and I this is not fabricated, fake its a genuine friendship love and appreciation and respect that we have for one another. So when you combine those two things with a decent level of intellect and perspective I think your’re going to get really compelling conversation and most of all your going to get fun and it’s going to be more formal.

 

As an African American woman and man what do you think this move means for black culture or sports journalism?

Hill—– We look at it this way we are not trying to be black, we are black (laughs). So this idea that we’re somehow trying to be extra black to get some blackness to Sportscenter is a little misleading. We’re going to be ourselves and with us being ourselves it means being black. I think we know that it’s significant to have two black people what is considered to be the evening news of sports media. We know the significance of the position by organically the same case on ‘His & Hers’ we’re going to discuss black culture and black culture within sports and pop culture because that’s naturally what we would do if we weren’t on TV. So, I think it comes from an authentic place and we’re not going to apologize for having those discussions at all. But, I just want people to understand that it’s certainly not completely 100 percent organic and if it’s a fire episode of ‘Housewives of Atlanta’ we gone talk about it and that’s just the way it works.

Smith—— Like Jemele said, we are not going to apologize for being ‘unapologetically black’ I think we’ve seen African Americans on ESPN for years. You’ve seen women on ESPN not as many african-american women but women nonetheless. What you haven’t seen is a complete freedom and we owe it to a lot of people like Stuart Scott, just as one example. A complete freedom to be yourself with no consideration or concern about the people who don’t get it. The people who don’t get blackness seem to have an extra loud volume when it comes to protest. Like you could be the whitest show in the world and nobody is going to be complaining “oh that show is too white.” I don’t remember hearing that “ah man that show is way too white.” I’m talking about from a perspective, I’m not talking about in terms of representation i’m talking about the way they converse, the way they cover sports, their opinions I don’t remember hearing complaints about shows being “too white.”

But our show from certain individuals has been tagged as ‘too black” in some people’s case. The evolution comes in a form of us being allowed to just be ourselves and frankly we didn’t ask for permission to be ourselves we just decided that we were going to be us  which is how we got ‘His & Hers’ and the same way we got the podcast. We were like “yo you can take this away if it didn’t work.” We never tried to conform and be what other people wanted us to be we were just going to be ourselves, be our best selves and our whole selves which is really easy when we’re together. So we’re ourselves consistently but if you’ve seen us apart enough you know that we are different when we’re together. That’s what makes us unique in that regard and not only that we’re not showing up doing it the way someone want’s us to do it or discussing the topics someone else tell’s us to discuss. We were deciding what we discuss on ‘His & Hers’ every aspect of the show was our decision, everything, video, graphics, fonts, topics we decided everything. The people on our show are not going to try and have us tone it down and do things differently. They are just going to enhance what we’ve been doing.

 

Do you guys have favorite hip-hop artist?

Smith—– Everyday lately I’ve been listening to ‘Run The Jewels‘ like that’s been my soundtrack. J. Cole, The New Tribe and just to mess with Jemele I listen to ‘Bad & Boujee’ (Laughs).

Hill—– This morning I listened to a Jill Scott playlist she’s one of my favorite artist like ever. I’ve been listening to Her a little more underground a lot of Foreign Exchange, Love J. Cole just like Mike, the Tribe album, Childish Gambino I’ve listened to his new joint. Both Mike and I are huge fans of music but nothing makes us more happier than when we run into musicians that we love that happen to be fans of our show. Like we recently went to see Keith Murray, Ghostface, Method Man here in Hartford and Ghostface brought us on stage and Redman was there too. We could not believe it he’s been a fan of the show for awhile and so moments like that are just priceless.

 

How do you guys feel about the Muslim Ban?

Smith—– I just find it interesting, ironic and rich that their fighting intelligence from the Obama administration and their like “Oh these are countries that Obama had flagged for potential threats were just following their lead.” If you let them tell it throughout the entire campaign the entire administration was incompetent and I’m like now you follow president Obama. It’s obviously the result of someone who most rational and reasonable people knew was incompetent and didn’t qualify to govern and he’s governing on the fly and he’s fulfilling his promises to his base, so you can’t say you didn’t see it coming. Because he said he would do it and thankfully there seems to be a growing level of resistance and a growing level of realization that you know what we messed up, we really did putting this dude in office. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and he thinks he knows who to listen to. But who to listen to when you don’t know the subject at hand, he knows about nothing other than to serve Donald Trump and to think that someone who spends life serving himself will have the best interest of people? Unlike him to think that somebody like that is all of a sudden going to become a public servant and take on the heart of a servant and he knows nothing about sacrifice, so why would he make decisions counter to his own instincts.

So it’s no surprise here and it’s no surprise America elected him in many ways he’s the most un-american president yet. He represents racism, bigotry,misogyny and we finally elected somebody who represents that side of America that we often tried to contain. But ultimately, you’ve seen a lot of people speaking out and a lot of people standing up. You’ve seen a lot of people not worry about inconveniencing the comfort of others and ultimately I think right and love will ultimately win. I hope.

Hill—– The sliver lining in this and I remind myself is that I’m seeing events that are quite embarrassing for us as a nation. We have struggled throughout various points in history to come up with something in history that can help us commonly be united again. The one thing that he is definitely doing is bringing people together in ways that are frankly unprecedented and I think it has sparked and engineered something. He doesn’t know it but he’s really messed around and helped a lot of people stumble upon their voices. People who didn’t feel obligated to use them before and for that I think I’m thankful. I would just say overall, we really have to understand how exactly having him in office will forever change the presidency and change something that is dear to my heart which is Journalism. We have lowered our standards in office and it was always interesting listening to him and listening to people who supported him they wanted somebody who sounded tough and what is it that people don’t understand about this immigration ban?

Is that we had some of the most extreme vetting already in place but they wanted somebody who sounded like they were going to do something as oppose to actually reading the policy. So now, because of our lack of decorum and the lack of diplomacy that’s in the white house we have gone out and it’s hard to believe that it’s just Day 10 and we have managed to piss off a huge percentage of the world. So for me I think I’m just hoping that the resistance continues and while a lot of people were trying to say give him the benefit of the doubt, try to work with him it’s hard to work with somebody who’s doing things like having Steve Bannon as his security council and he’s one of the most racist people in this country. I can deal with the inexperience, one of my criticisms of Barack Obama when he was first elected was that he was inexperienced, not relative to this. You can be inexperience but where I can tell if your a great leader by who you surround yourself with people who know what they’re talking about and he’s not doing that.

 

One last question: Who are you guys picking to win the Super Bowl?

Smith—– This is a tough one for me because I have so much respect for Atlanta, so much respect for Matt Ryan and those skilled guys. But, I feel like I’ve seen this movie before and my first super bowl 36 was the first one I ever covered in New Orleans with the Rams. The Rams was the greatest show on turf they had won the super bowl two years earlier and this was their 2nd time in three years. I remember Torry Holt talking about yeah “we’ll be a dynasty when we win this you can start putting us in that conversation.” He was actually entertaining the thought and this team goes up there and they find a way to neutralize one of the best dual threat running-backs in NFL History with Marshall Faulk.

They neutralize Marshall Faulk, they hold them to 17 points and they win on a field goal and I just see some remix of that taking place. I see Bill Belichick and Matt Patricia the Defensive coordinator. I see them figuring out a way to neutralize Julio Jones and they’re going to make Matt Ryan beat them by throwing to an underwhelming group of tight ends, Mohamed Sanu and see if he can put up enough points because the Patriots are going to score points and they’re not going to be able to run the ball. The patriots will be able to stop Atlanta’s running game with 6 or 7 guys and Julio Jones won’t beat them. I think the Patriots are just going to score too many, i’m looking at 34-20 Patriots. But I do want to hear Atlanta ‘Knuck If You Buck’ (Laughs).

Hill—- I’m picking the patriots for entertaining reasons. I really want to see Roger Goodell have to hand this trophy to Tom Brady after that bogus suspension I enjoy awkwardness and I enjoy awkwardness when it comes to the NFL commissioner. So, I am all about that happening.

 

Any last comments to end the interview for fans who are tuning in on Monday at 6pm?

Smith— I want to thank them in advance because we are here because people invested in us to give us a chance. We haven’t been perfect we’ve had some mistakes some growing pains we’ve gone through some changes. But, the people have stuck with us the viewers who have watched it and supported it. This place is not in the business of charity this is a business. They would not put us here because they want two black people, they wouldn’t give us the 6pm Sportscenter slot if it weren’t in the best interest of Sportscenter and it just so happened to be in our best interest. They put us here because of Sportscenter, they put us here because they wanted a fresh approach for the benefit of Sportscenter. That’s not possible if we don’t have loyal viewers like yourself and people tuning in to ‘His & Hers’ and making ‘His & Hers’ relevant. So I guess I’m just going to thank them in advance for bringing us this far and don’t leave us now, it’s only getting better.

Hill—- Well, he kind of summed it up pretty nicely there, I think more than anything people should be prepared to have fun and theirs a lot of television I watch where I feel like I’m going through labor. I think we bring a much different approach. We want you to feel like you’re hanging with your family or some of your friends you may not always agree with us but your going to have a good time even when you don’t.

Note: The interview has been edited for control of length.