Amy Robach and TJ Holmes Explain ABC and GMA’s Exit on New Podcast – The Hollywood Reporter

TJ Holmes and Amy Robach at the Jingle Ball on iHeartRadio 102.7 KIIS FM on December 01, 2023 in Los Angeles.

Jesse Grant/Getty Images for iHeartRadio

A year after ABC News first suspended them following the public revelation of their personal relationship, Amy Robach and TJ Holmes are speaking out about what happened.

The couple discussed their relationship and subsequent departure from ABC in the first episode of iHeartMedia’s new podcast, called Amy and TJ

Holmes and Robach were, of course, co-anchors GMA3the early afternoon spinoff of the ABC morning show Good morning America. About a year ago, a tabloid revealed that the two were in a relationship, and ABC News president Kim Goodwin announced that they would be pulled from the show “temporarily” as the network found out about the response.

ABC eventually parted ways with Robach and Holmes in January of this year, with a spokesperson saying: “We have all agreed that it is best for everyone to move on.”

“I think the best way to sum up what we are, Amy and TJ, is that we are the people who have lost jobs that we love because we love each other,” Holmes said. On the podcast Tuesday. “And that’s the point.”

Holmes said one of the ideas for the name of the podcast was “Less Scandal,” because this was a scandal that wasn’t one.

Robach and Holmes said many “mainstream” news outlets chose not to report on their relationship when they found out they were both going through a divorce, but the tabloid’s report led to the ill-fated decision by ABC News to suspend them.

“Each of us received a phone call from our bosses telling us that they had made the decision – and they reiterated that we had not violated any company policy – ​​but because we had become a distraction they thought it would be best if they temporarily took us off the air to calm things down,” Robach recalls. “I said… Now this is going to be a story if you take us off the air, please don’t do this.”

“That was the morning we knew we weren’t going back to that network,” Holmes added. “We knew that phone call settled it, because you can’t come back from that.”

“I felt sick because we knew what was coming as soon as that announcement was made,” Robach continued.

Robach said their plan was to finalize their divorce, then tell ABC management and the public they were a couple, but the tabloid report forced them to do so. Holmes added that some media coverage portrayed them as “adulterers.”

“We thought we’d go in January and explain to management that we were a couple…We had actually talked about doing that earlier,” Robach recalls. “Right before the pictures came out, we thought: Should we tell them what’s going on? And we thought, ‘Let’s get these divorces done and then let’s do this.’” But we had every intention of doing it and we didn’t believe, and I don’t think we still believe we were doing anything. Technically wrong.

“If we make statements about divorce, and then people find out we’re dating, they’ll raise some eyebrows and say, ‘Oh, well, that’s still an interesting topic,'” Holmes added. “But by doing it this way, the story became mainstream when they were able to say ‘Morning Show Stars Suspended’. That’s now a major story given the brand we were associated with. That’s a pretty big deal. We knew that was going to be a big deal.”

But Holmes added that he didn’t initially think their relationship would rise to the level of a national news story, admitting it was because they were on the fence. GMA Turns out he should have been clearer on things.

“In this world, associated with the show we were on, this is just a weird, exciting story,” Holmes said. “And I don’t think we thought about it that way, where anyone would care what we were doing.”