A Kenyan safari guide. A Hollywood costume designer. A world-traveling sommelier. In this series, we learn about the journeys people take to land the ultimate Dream Jobs.
When a great TV series ends, viewers are often left with that wistful feeling of wanting more. Or maybe that feeling comes about after watching the perfect film, or listening to an album that moves the listener to tears. For Kevin Frazier, host of Entertainment Tonight and media entrepreneur, it's exactly that feeling—of curiosity, passion, wanting more—that fuels his career. Because Kevin Frazier’s job lets him do what most people do for free: talk endlessly about entertainment.
In the suburbs of Los Angles, Frazier has taken up professional residence at Entertainment Tonight—and many a red carpet—for the last 17 years, starting first as a correspondent before eventually climbing the ranks to hosting the Emmy award-winning program. In American culture, ET, which is currently celebrating its 40th anniversary season, has become a go-to source for entertainment news, recognizable by just a few seconds of its signature theme song.
Since he became an ET host in 2014, Frazier has interviewed a handful of high-profile celebrities including Beyoncé, Kobe Bryant, and O’s very own Oprah, all while building his own websites, HipHollywood.com and Travel Coterie.
But the beginning of Frazier's career looked quite different.
Years before he entered entertainment, Frazier was immersed in the world of sports. His dad Nat Frazier spent more than a decade as head college basketball coach at Morgan State University, which meant that growing up, Kevin had a courtside view of the action. Sharing his father’s love of the game, he initially pursued a career as a sports journalist.
After graduating from Morgan State, Frazier's first job was at a local TV station in Charleston, South Carolina, and he worked as a cameraman. “I would shoot my own stories,” he said in a 2012 interview with the WSJ about his time learning the business of “putting together pictures and words and understanding how it’s put together to make great stories." After years of new TV stations in different cities, he got his first big break into network television at 38 years old, when he became a host at ESPN.
“I was a sports guy who still loved pop culture. I was the guy who, at ESPN, would be sitting there, especially during baseball season, watching ET,” he tells OprahMag.com. Already having what could widely be considered a dream job, Frazier was content with covering sports at its pinnacle. That was, until he got a call from his agent with a request that was hard to ignore: ET executive producer Linda Bell Blue and asked him to take a meeting to discuss the possibility of joining their team.
“When you're at ESPN, you think that's the center of the world: sports and men!" he says. "I didn't understand that, really, the center of the universe is women, especially moms out there, and that ET’s audience was 10 times that of ESPN's at the time.” In 2004, Frazier officially joined ET.
The focus of his coverage may have shifted, but the hosting skills were transferable and made for great training for the next chapter of his career. Instead of recalling players’ stats, he was now tasked with remembering TV characters and being knowledgeable about celebrities he may or may not personally have been a fan of—all while being prepared to ask them the relevant questions at any given moment.
“Doing the Oscars is the greatest pop quiz you can ever take. You're standing there on the carpet, and Lord knows who's coming next. And you better be able to regurgitate that information to get the answers,” he says.
During his tenure at ET and its sister show The Insider, Frazier has worked alongside celebrities and worked on the ground for some of pop-culture history's most memorable occasions, including Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's royal wedding. He worked alongside longtime ET hosts Nancy O'Dell and Mary Hart, and now continues to deliver entertainment news with correspondents Nichelle Turner, Lauren Zima, Rachel Smith, and Matt Cohen.
Now, in an interview with OprahMag.com, Frazier moves to the other side of the interview.
To me, pop culture has always been a mirror for the things we need. What do you think entertainment and pop culture has been saying about our needs lately?
Entertainment and pop culture has been a needed distraction for a minute. I think that we've seen shows that may be a little over the top in some way, because we've needed to get far from reality. The real greatest show on Earth was happening in Washington D.C. You couldn't make up the things that were happening in the government and in our country. You couldn't make up that everybody was going to be locked down at home during a pandemic. You couldn't make up that people were going to storm the Capitol. You couldn't make up some of the things that our former president said. So pop culture has had to be a balance and a distraction.
But I also think that pop culture is a mirror into our soul, and it is the thing that keeps us healthy. It's just like a good friendship. You begin to have relationships with these stars that you watchm and you follow them over the years. And so I think that's the beauty of pop culture.
What's the last project you watched that blew you away?
I watch a really wide array of things; on one end, it'll be Vice News, and on the other end, a great movie. I loved the movie Sylvie's Love that came out in December. I loved that movie because it felt like a movie that was showing my family in the 50s and 60s, and you don't see these movies about the African American experience that show the elegance that is part of our everyday life. When you normally see Black folks, you see them in the South, you see them as slaves, you see them as poor sharecroppers or something like that, but in this film there were also people who, regardless of their station in life, were dressed with dignity and elegance, and were beautiful. So for the first time in a long time, I saw that, and it made me so happy. It was just a love story about regular ol' Black folk.
You’re the host of Entertainment Tonight, but you also own a website centered on Black entertainment, as well as a travel guide. What inspired you to venture into those spaces?
This job is one of the best jobs on the planet, and I love it and I'm into it. But in the past, I've seen the inequities that are around in the world. And when it comes to travel, I've noticed that I go to these places, and I've never known the history that is so important to not only African Americans, but everybody.
I've been to London on Westminster Bridge at least 30 times. I didn't know until my last trip that if I turned around and looked the other direction, away from Big Ben, there was a statue of Mary Seacole, the most famous Black person in U.K. history. Her story is fascinating, because she is what Florence Nightingale was to nursing, and her story has been lost. I'm so glad there's a movie coming out about her. But there are places like that all over the world. So it's amazing to learn these stories, and it makes me feel whole when I get to learn about these things and share them with others.
It's the same thing with HipHollywood. Ava DuVernay's first movie was I Will Follow with Salli Richardson, and we were on the set of that movie and covering it. And while the mainstream folks didn't cover it, it was important for our community. That is why there is HipHollywood.
Was it important to you for HipHollywood to be Black-owned and Black-centered?
I come from a place where you can be angry and you can argue about things, but I also have to understand that ET has the biggest stories in the world. And there are only 22 minutes for ET. We can't cover every thing and every story, because we have the biggest stars in the world. That's not a failing by ET, it's just the reality.
There are some other things that are smaller that aren't gonna make it to the top of the food chain. But I do think that it's important that as an African American in this position, that I put my money where my mouth is. That's why I think it's important that I don't complain about anything, but I lead the way and am willing to put the time and effort into these other projects, too.
What is special about the art of the sit-down interview, even, if it's virtually? Has your job evolved due to the increased access we get to celebrities from social media?
I think that it is kind of cool that celebrities are a little more relaxed when they're in their house. When you're sitting in your favorite chair, it's different than when you're out of your comfort zone and you're in a room with somebody else. I think that has been interesting to see. When celebrities feel more comfortable, they want to take more time, and they want to talk about things and explain more things when they're at home. But I always also feel like we don't listen well.
Sometimes, people come in with an agenda and they just say I gotta get to these five things and I don't care about anything else. But if you listen, you'll get there eventually, you just have to weave your way there. I think that interviewing is the art of listening, knowing, and understanding all about this person, and being able to go in many different directions that will still get you home.
Throughout your successful career, you’ve become well-known yourself. Is it ever weird for you to be on the opposite side of the interview?
It is always bizarre being interviewed, because I really do see myself as just regular me. I began as a cameraman in Charleston, South Carolina, and I don't see a big difference between the guy who held the camera and the guy who's here. Both of us are hungry, want to learn...and I still, I feel like that person. I'm a father now and a husband, but I still feel pretty much like that same guy.
So, it is very interesting and weird sometimes, and it's also weird when I'm talking to someone and they're like "Oh my God look who I'm talking to." It’s crazy! It's the weirdest thing that I don't really see myself as some big celebrity. I feel like I'm a person who tells celebrities’ stories. I'm not that famous in my house. I feel like my wife is more famous; in my house, she's the one who's running the show, making it happen, and doing big things.
Do you have a favorite experience or relationship born out of your job?
I know this is going to sound crazy because I'm talking to Oprah Magazine, but you have to understand the evolution of this, OK?
One of my all-time favorite moments was when Barack Obama was confirmed at the DNC in Denver. You're already emotional that day, because a Black man is about to get the Democratic nomination. And when he started speaking, I started searching. My producer and I went on this hunt to find Oprah. When the speech was over, we saw these two little girls sitting in a hallway and I said to these little girls, "What are you doing?" And they're like, "Well, hopefully, Oprah will say hi to us." So I sat down next to the two little girls and we just waited, and when the speech is over, she came out and she uttered, "I cried my eyelashes off."
But that was one of my favorite moments, because that quote went around the world. That moment was so historical and significant, but it was also a moment where I felt like I actually did my job. I was there, and I did my job.
Entertainment Tonight is celebrating 40 years as being a home for buzz and media. What does the next couple of decades at ET look like to you?
First of all, it's crazy to think about, because I got here in 2004. Mary Hart was still here, and I love Mary so much. To watch what she helped build was incredible. Entertainment Tonight was the show that helped get satellite in new stations so you could put something out on a daily basis, so the history of this show is incredible, and every day I get to come in here, I think about today. I think about right now, and I think about how lucky I am, and who rides through that gate with me...my ancestors that come with me every day that I get to do this show.
It's never lost on me that this is the biggest entertainment show in the world, and that I am lucky enough to stand on that. I think that as we evolve and as the world changes, Entertainment Tonight stays at the forefront, and I love doing this job. I'm like a 12-year-old kid. I still get excited about these stories. I still get excited to go places and do things. I still get excited to chase a story down.
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Shelby Copeland is an associate editor and the assistant to O's editor-at-large, Gayle King. When she's not in assistant mode or writing for Oprah Daily, she loves spending her time listening to music and podcasts, reading, re-watching old sitcoms, and eating Cinnabons at brunch.
