Nancy Grace To Leave HLN After More Than A Decade
Nancy Grace, one of America’s most controversial television personalities, has announced she will be departing from HLN after more than a decade when her contract expires in October. The Hollywood Reporter was the first to report the news after Nancy made the announcement to her staff Thursday morning.
Prior to taking on the world of television, Grace was a special prosecutor for the Atlanta Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, where she worked on cases involving murder, rape, child molestation, and arson, according to Grace’s official website. Nancy pursued the career as a prosecutor after her fiance was murdered when she was only 19-years-old.
Nancy’s start in television came when she was sought out to co-host Court TV’s Cochran and Grace with the late Johnie Cochran at the network’s CNN Center headquarters in Atlanta. She then hosted Closing Arguments, where she provided daily trial coverage, and she also hosted the hit daytime show Swift Justice with Nancy Grace.
Nancy Grace to Leave HLN After More Than a Decade https://t.co/inKRrXELYw pic.twitter.com/ZBMEUbbEog
— NYT Business (@nytimesbusiness) June 30, 2016
Not only has Nancy Grace hosted her fair share of television shows, she has also appeared on other shows to share her controversial opinions, including The Oprah Winfrey Show, The View, Today, Good Morning America, Dr. Phil, and Larry King Live, among others. She also appeared on Season 13 of Dancing with the Stars and finished within the top five. She later gave all of her earnings from the show to National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Nancy Grace released her first book Objection! in 2005, and it instantly became a New York Times bestseller. She later released her second novel, The Eleventh Victim, in 2009 and Death on the D-List in 2010. Grace’s fourth book, Murder in the Courthouse, will debut in stores on October 11.
In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Nancy revealed she had been “thinking a lot about” leaving the network for the past three years, a decision she said was definitely not easy to make. However, after much thought, Grace realized leaving was the right decision for her and informed CNN executive vp Ken Jautz, the same man who brought her to the network in 2005.
“At the end of my meeting with Ken, I gave him a big hug and he hugged me back. It was like full circle,” Grace explained.
Nancy Grace set to depart HLN after 12 years: What’s next? https://t.co/9ZbsDKuGbc pic.twitter.com/RwUjymin2X
— Hollywood Reporter (@THR) June 30, 2016
“Nancy has worked tirelessly on behalf of the missing and exploited for more than a decade on HLN,” said Jautz. “She gave a voice to the voiceless, and we are extremely grateful for her contributions to the network. During her remarkable career at HLN, she led the coverage of two of this century’s most talked about and infamous trials, Casey Anthony and Jodi Arias. We will always be champions of Nancy’s mission and are excited to see what’s next for her.”
Nancy hasn’t revealed the exact reasons for her departure, but she assured THR that she isn’t taking a hiatus and will continue working in television.
“I will always be wedded to a traditional platform — which is TV, God help me,” she explained. “My plan is to merge those two in an effective way, in my voice, the ‘anti-crime’ voice. Our show has never really been about me. It has been about the stories that we tell and the people we talk about and the mysteries we try to solve and the children we try to bring home. There’s an entire section of our population that I want to reach.”
The final episode of Nancy Grace will air on October 13. After that, a new series that will “utilize the expertise of the current team” will fill the 8 p.m. time slot.
[Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP Images]