Mark your calendars for Sunday, June 19: MSNBC is premiering part one of an exciting new special, The Culture Is. Oprah Daily has an exclusive clip from the inaugural episode, titled The Culture Is: Black Women, which features a conversation between Black women moderated by MSNBC hosts Tiffany Cross, of The Cross Connection, and Joy Reid, of The ReidOut, who both executive produced the special, as well as an interview between Reid and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Cross and Reid are bringing us behind the scenes of this new project, which has its roots in deep friendships as well as the sense of community that forms when sharing a meal together. In 2021, Cross, Reid, and a bevy of other successful Black women, including Sunny Hostin and Alicia Garza, were on a girls’ trip together. “This group of women came together because we had formed, on a text thread, a bond to get ourselves through the pandemic and the ending of the Trump era,” Reid says. “We were just there to support each other.” But they all quickly became real-life friends who vacationed together. “It was our time to relax, decompress, and have very raw, real, comfortable, authentic conversations with each other,” Cross says.
After they returned, the women ended up posting Instagram photos of the trip at the same time, prompting an onslaught of positive comments. Everyone thought the trip had been part of an organized gathering—and wanted in. “We thought, we should extend this conversation and this table to other people,” Cross says.
“Some of the best parts of that trip were our dinners, where we would just sit around hearing each other’s stories,” Reid says. “I thought if we’re going to do an event that’s about sisterhood, why not try to re-create that magic of being around a table together?” Everyone included in the creative process agreed. “That’s where women share their experiences,” Cross says. “We gather around food, and it’s an integral part of our sisterhood.”
From there, Cross and Reid brought the idea to MSNBC. Rashida Jones, the first Black woman to be president of MSNBC, loved the project’s concept. They were then tasked with figuring out who should be part of these conversations. “I’m happy to say we had an embarrassment of riches,” Cross reveals. They wanted a wide range of women from across various industries: entertainment, sports, the military, journalism, and more. “There is such rich diversity within our own communities. Black women are not a monolith; we’re not homogenous in our thinking,” Cross says. Reid agrees: “It’s impossible to have a conversation about the lived experiences of Black women without having such a wide scope of voices.”
That scope is certainly represented. Cross and Reid compiled a group of noteworthy women including Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, Tarana Burke, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Robin Thede, among others. They talked over delicious food cooked by chef Melba Wilson at Minton's Playhouse—a historic Harlem speakeasy Reid picked because she’s “a little obsessed with the flapper era.”
Former ESPN sportscaster Maria Taylor was also present—and spoke out for the first time about leaving the network. Taylor departed ESPN in 2021 after a leaked recording of a white colleague was made public, in which the colleague suggested race was a driving factor in selection for high-profile broadcast assignments. “What happened is emblematic of what happens to so many Black women in these corporate spaces,” Reid says. “We all face these moments of insensitivity and slights against your presence and qualifications that are based solely on the way, unfortunately, a lot of our culture thinks about Black people and Black women.” Watch Taylor tell the story in our exclusive clip above.
Despite covering these more serious topics, the conversation wasn’t lacking in joy and laughter. “Seeing people’s interactions, just having fun and enjoying each other, was my favorite thing,” Reid says. That included the hilarity between Thede, creator of HBO Max’s A Black Lady Sketch Show, and Ryan Michelle Bathe, star of NBC’s The Endgame, as well as celebrating the achievements of Hannah-Jones’s 1619 Project. “We had these moments to just celebrate each and every one of these women and their accomplishments and just lift them up,” Reid says.
That extends to what Cross and Reid hope audiences take away from watching The Culture Is: Black Women. “We want the women who are watching to feel uplifted,” Reid says. “There’s a story at that table for every woman.” Cross and Reid are excited to see what their counterparts do for the following specials, each of which will focus on a different group of women of color. Justina Machado will host the next installment, The Culture Is: Latina Women, airing this summer. After that, MSNBC’s Katie Phang will moderate The Culture is: AAPI Women, and NBC News’ Alyssa London will host The Culture Is: Indigenous Women, both of which will air later in summer 2022.
“The rising majority of the country gets left out of the conversation,” Cross says. That’s why The Culture Is is an important and necessary project: It’s shining a light on the often marginalized experiences of these women. It’s letting them speak with themselves and for themselves, but also to America as a whole.
Knowing they’re speaking to the country is not a role Cross and Reid take lightly, either. “It’s just an honor, privilege, and really a responsibility that we took very seriously,” Cross says. “It was divine how we were all able to come together—it was just a perfect table.”
The Culture Is: Black Women airs Sunday, June 19, at 10 PM ET on MSNBC. It will also be available to stream on Peacock.
Cassie Hurwitz (she/her) is an associate editor at Oprah Daily, where she covers everything from culture to entertainment to lifestyle. She can typically be found in the middle of multiple books and TV shows all at once. Previously, Cassie worked at Parents, Rachael Ray In Season, and Reveal. Her love language is pizza (New York slices, Chicago deep dish, and otherwise).
