Inside MSNBC's ‘The Weekend' Reboot

Yahoo

05-03-2025

Next month MSNBC will be shaking up a big portion of its lineup.
As part of sweeping changes from president Rebecca Kutler, shows in dayside and primetime will be impacted, with notable names moving to new time periods. Among the changes is taking The Weekend, the panel show led by Alicia Menendez, Symone Sanders-Townsend and Michael Steele and moving it to 7 p.m. on weekdays.
More from The Hollywood Reporter
Joy Reid Says Black Women "Are Living at a Time of Theft" at Essence Awards Days After MSNBC Dismissal
MSNBC Layoffs Set to Impact 99 Union Staffers, Guild Claims
Joy Reid Opens Final MSNBC Show With Message of Resistance: "Fascism Isn't Just Coming, It's Already Here"
The show had quickly found an eager audience on weekend mornings, and Kutler is banking that a weekday evening audience will latch onto the format as well. With those three hosts exiting, MSNBC is also betting that it can bring in new (albeit familiar) voices to the weekend program, which will be expanding from two to three hours every Saturday and Sunday.
MSNBC this week revealed that current weekend host and Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart, and newly-minted MSNBC correspondents Eugene Daniels and Jackie Alemany will co-host the show, beginning in late April.
The three hosts made their joint debut on Morning Joe Wednesday morning. The Hollywood Reporter caught up with the trio Tuesday to break down what their plans are for the new iteration of The Weekend.
What do you hope the new iteration of the show will bring to the table on the weekend, and what do each of you hope to bring, individually, from your own perspective, to the show?
Jonathan Capehart: Journalistically, Jackie, Eugene and I are the same. We cover the same stories, cover the same events, but we're in two different disciplines within journalism. I'm in the opinion space where I get to report but then say what I think. And Eugene and Jackie are in the news side reporting space, and what I'm looking forward to is being able to from my vantage point, lean into them and their reporting to better educate the viewers about what's going on, helping the viewers get inside of Washington.
Eugene Daniels: When Rebecca called, and we talked about what the role would be for me, it would be bringing first and foremost reporting and news analysis to the hosting space. My favorite thing about what we're going to be doing here is intertwining Capehart's opinion-based analysis, and Jackie and I's news focus, reporting focus, analysis, and all the things that we have been working on for all of our careers, and to make a really important, interesting show and create a dialogue.
My hope for the entire show is that it's a space for newsmakers, regular people, powerful people, people who want more power to come to the table, whether at our actual table or virtually, and get asked the questions that all of us are wanting. The three of us will press them on all of that, and we'll come at it from different angles, which I think is actually more interesting than just three opinion hosts at once, or just three news hosts all at once.
And for me, the way that I approach journalism in general and analysis on television, is calling balls and strikes. You talk about the reporting, but you also explain it and why it matters, and add the context. And also you call a thing a thing. And I think the viewers, the listeners, the people that read us, they deserve that declaration of honesty in the news vein as well.
Jackie Alemany: Symone and Alicia and Michael have really laid and established incredible groundwork for us, and are some certainly big shoes to fill, but we will all bring some different flair and skillset to the latest iteration of the show. I think for me something that's always been a North Star throughout my career has been objective, unflinching and fair accountability reporting, and that was something that Rebecca and I discussed right off the bat, for me to continue what I've been doing for the past six years of the post, and to bring that to MSNBC and across audiovisual platforms.
I really consider the first job of a journalist is to put pressure on power, reporting pressure, investigative pressure. And in this new capacity, what I'm really excited to do is, is put pressure in a different way through interviews and conversations. And at the end of the end of the day, I think, you know, my priority is always to teach our viewers something new, elevate new voices, elevate the voices of reporters. And you'll meet some, some new reporters through us who don't traditionally get any airtime.
A three hour weekend show is a very different type of program than a daily television news program. In the daily mix, you're kind of reacting to the news cycle, and the news cycle is obviously insane these days, but with a weekend show, I feel like you have a little more room to breathe. Eugene, it sounded like you hoped to have kind of news making guests as well.
Daniels: Having three hours on Saturday and three hours on Sunday, it allows us to give the viewers in this kind of chaotic news cycle that we live in a read of all of the things and why they matter. It's not just this is what happened during the week, but also this is why it matters, this is how it impacts you. And then we can try to be forward looking as well.
A three hour show sounds difficult, very difficult, but between the three of us and that three hour show and working together, it's bringing those newsmakers on who did something during the week, or have strong opinions about what happened during the week, and with them help guide the viewers through all of the things that happened. We will certainly not have any issue finding newsmakers, reporters, people to help fill those three hours in a way that is captivating, and more importantly, matches this moment in history that the three of us have as we get onto this platform.
Capehart: I've been anchoring the Saturday show and Sunday show for four years, and the whole challenge has been particularly at 6 p.m., what are we going to tell the audience that they don't already know by 6 p.m. Saturday, 6 p.m. Sunday, and that's a challenge with any weekend show. Saturday and Sunday morning we are going to be geared to putting into context, as Eugene said, what has happened, but also spinning forward and saying to viewers, 'here's what's coming down the road. here's what you need to pay attention to.' It's not just bringing new voices to the table, it's also shining a spotlight on issues that the viewers might not know that they should either care about or that they will care about come the following days, following weeks. And that's what's exciting about having three hours, we have so much room to roam, to talk, to interview, to illuminate. Three hours is a lot, but it's going to go by so quickly.
Alemany: It's the perfect venue to synthesize the deluge of news that we're seeing right now, especially with so many people experiencing some news fatigue during this time. Maybe The Weekend is the time for them to kind of sit down with some coffee and and take it in, in a in a less non-stop way.
Capehart: With some friends!
Alemany: Yeah, while also looking to the week ahead.
When I , one of the things they brought up was that they felt like they developed a very quick chemistry. How much time have you been able to spend with each other? And how do you hope to develop and build that on-screen chemistry that, frankly, is really important to any sort of panel program?
Capehart: That's going to be easy. When I found out Eugene was going to be one of the co-hosts, I leapt in the air because Eugene and I have known each other for a long time. We adore each other. I will speak for him on that. And then when it comes to Jackie and I, we work at the same paper, and even though we haven't seen each other much because we were separate floors. When Jackie and I have done television together, when I have interviewed her, she is the best of the Washington reporters. I hope it will make this very challenging time for a lot of people. Give them a little solace, a reason to smile, while also learning about what's happening in their country.
Daniels: We've known each other for a long time, I have a relationship with each of them, and vice versa. We've already started a text group, we've already talked about some ideas and the way that we're thinking about this. I think when it comes to chemistry, I played football growing up. You know the playbook, it's all chemistry. They are both brilliant and bring all of their years of experience to bear, but they're also lovely humans. Waking up at five o'clock and sitting in that makeup chair at six, that is the journey, but being able to do it with people who are going to be friends and family is what I'm really looking forward to. And I think when you actually like each other, it is easy for that to come across on screen.
Alemany: Eugene and I recognize that Jonathan has that D1 athlete mentality, not to sound like maudlin, but I think the number one priority was, you ask anyone about them, and it's these are very good people, treat everyone with kindness and respect, and that has always been a priority for me when looking at next steps in my life and career.
Daniels: I think what I'm excited about is that Symone, Alicia and Michael have built such a platform that is interesting and trusted by the viewers. That is the reason why they are being uplifted and getting 7 p.m., five days a week on the weekdays in that primetime hour. The three of us have big shoes to fill. We're standing on their shoulders as we get into this new vibe, but they've done a lot of the hard work for us, which is getting a lot of viewers to trust that in that morning time slot Saturday and Sunday, there is going to be unvarnished news and analysis that you can trust.
Capehart: As Eugene said, Alicia, Steele and Symone, they've set the standard. And so the way I think of it is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. That being said, you can tinker with it, and we'll tinker with it just by nature of our personalities and what drives us and what our interests are. So as Eugene said, they've left us a great template. They've done most of the heavy lifting. Now we just have to carry it.
Jonathan, you've obviously had a presence on MSNBC weekends some time. Are there any elements from the show that you think would work in the morning, or that you'd like to bring to that time period?
That's a good question. What I love about this format compared to the one I have now, is the conversation. When you have your own show, and you are the solo person in the anchor chair, it's all on you. What do you think? How are you driving the conversation? But with the mornings, 7 to 10, I get to do as a Saturday show and a Sunday show, to interview lawmakers, hold their feet to the fire, ask them the hard questions.
MSNBC is going through a transition period, with the new schedule launching next week. And it comes amid a crazy news cycle, have you given any thought as to how you plan to cover the deluge of news that will likely continue over the coming months?
Capehart: I think what we will do is what any show would do, and that is in the deluge, pick out the biggest pieces to talk about. The benefit of having three hours is we won't need to spend a lot of time choosing, we've got the real estate to focus in on as many important things as we can over the course of six hours on Saturday and Sunday, and being mindful of the fact that our audience knows a lot of the news, what they come to us for is 'okay, explain to me why this matters. Put this into context for me. Give me the rhetorical ammunition I need to argue with my neighbor, argue with my relatives, or with my spouse or siblings.'
It's been six weeks since January 20, something like that. There's so there's so much news. That's also why we're expanding to three hours instead of The Weekend's current two, because so much news is breaking that you've got to come on air at seven o'clock, when the country is pretty much waking up, to tell them, here's what's happened, here's what's happening, here's what's going to happen, and here's this newsmaker to try to explain it to you.
Alemany: Just to add to that, it's a luxury and a privilege to be able to have a show and a set time where we can do that for our viewers. And I think it's really more important than ever.
Eugene, in addition to your role at MSNBC, you're also the president of the White House Correspondents Association. I know it's a totally separate role, but I have to imagine that some of the things you're dealing with there will come up at some point on . Have you given any thought to how you would cover them, or how you would address them on the show?
Daniels: I think, at the end of the day, where my MSNBC, where my political job ends, that's where the WHCA job starts And that's been the same for every President since the beginning of time. People have a hard time when you try to explain to them the how you can take those hats on and off, and how seamless it has to be.
Whether or not we're going to analyzing the media landscape and the interactions between the White House press corps and the what's happening with this White House or any White House in the future, I think that's a conversation that we'll have, and will do what makes sense. We will have an executive producer who will bring to bear all of their knowledge in the way they're thinking about it. But what I have always done is, as a journalist, I'm doing that job. And when I'm the president of the WHCA, I'm thinking about the 800-plus members of the association, and making sure that that association continues to have the credibility that that it has, and that the title under my name has nothing to do with that.
Best of The Hollywood Reporter
The Cast of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' Then and Now
'Yellowstone' and the Sprawling Dutton Family Tree, Explained
A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise