Fox News’ Jessica Tarlov Wants You to Talk to People You Disagree With

Jessica Tarlov understands your skepticism. The liberal co-host of Fox News Channel’s The Five hears from viewers and peers all the time. For conservatives, she is someone who pierces the ideological bubble of the show. For liberals, she is sometimes seen as a traitor to the cause, working for the enemy.

But Tarlov doesn’t let it get to her. It actually inspires her to try and persuade skeptical conservatives that liberals might have some points and to convince those on the left that it is worth it, or even necessary, to go on Fox News and get in front of Republicans.

TV was not in Tarlov’s original career plan (despite having a Hollywood connection, more on that below), but when she broke through on The Five she did so in a big way, pushing back against the likes of Greg Gutfeld, Jesse Watters and Jeanine Pirro, but always in a way that was more reminiscent of a family dinner than ideological warfare.

This week she releases a book, I Disagree , that is part memoir and part self-help guide. It tracks her career and time at Fox, and gives some practical advice to readers for how to navigate those family get-togethers.

The Hollywood Reporter recently caught up with Tarlov to discuss it. The interview has been edited for clarity.

Help me understand what sparked the idea for this book. It’s a really interesting concept, you combine the anecdotes with tips for how to help people navigate this stuff in real life. Why did you decide to go with that particular format?

Jessica Tarlov: So, the idea to write the book was a combination of that opening scene with the Columbia Journalism students after the 2024 election that I start the book with, which was a soothing afternoon for me because it was great to meet the next generation of people who wanted to go out there and do fearless journalism and get into the space, and to better understand what it is that’s top of mind for them, and then the shock that they were so interested in getting out of ideological silos — whether it’s because I’ve spent so much time maybe with my colleagues who have a particular viewpoint of the ivory tower and how there’s no ideological division whatsoever on college campuses anymore, and I don’t assume that I understand the politics of these students necessarily — but I have this assumption that this is going to be a bunch of left wingers, who wanted to follow traditional paths wherever they were going, and they were so focused on the idea of being able to shape a worldview and go out there and defend it.

It really kind of threw me for a loop, and I thought, “oh, this is different.” The election definitely had impacted them. The assumption amongst a lot of people was that Donald Trump, who was historically unpopular then and now is even more historically unpopular, he couldn’t be President again, even with how difficult the Democratic side of of the table was, and especially when you’re talking to people in their 20s, they want to believe that people get into office who believe the same things that you do, and that it would be normal to elect someone who had the same view on civil rights and the environment and abortion and all those kinds of things.