She's So CALM! Abby Phillip Gets 'You Go, Girl' Gushy Profile by 'McPaper' USA Today

She bakes homemade sourdough bread and dreams of attending culinary school. Her favorite dish to prepare is beef short rib à la Martha Stewart. Phillip longs to play the piano again, a hobby she first took up at 5. Now 37, she spends any free time she can grasp away from the swarm of New York City’s bar-crawling social scene. On one recent March morning, she compared her role managing a rotating panel of liberals and conservatives on her sometimes-combative CNN show to her off-air priorities: raising her 4-year-old daughter, Naomi. One of the things that you learn pretty early on is that if you match their energy with your energy, things just spiral out of control, Phillip told USA TODAY from her New York abode last month. So sometimes you have to just sort of get people's attention calmly. Later, that promotional theme repeats. It helps that I'm the person who's not doing what everybody else is doing at the table and is remaining calm ... It's just how I actually go through the world, Phillip said. She loved this article: Thanks for this great feature @USATODAY and Jay Stahl! https://t.co/GZ0JwrI9UF — Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) April 18, 2026 The McPaper's Reporter of Color is here to celebrate the Woman of Color, but they really go hard in noting that Phillip's 10 p.m. show is in primetime, unlike the other black women hosting programs. This was the subheadline: Phillip – the only Black woman to helm a primetime news program in the most coveted block of news programming – garners praise for keeping her cool as host amid the show's heated hour-long runtime. Then, in Stahl's story, they admit there are other black women hosting TV shows at night: Phillip – the only Black woman to helm a primetime news program in the United States – has garnered praise for keeping her cool amid the show's heated hour-long runtime. Symone Sanders Townsend co-anchors The Weeknight on MS NOW at 7 p.m. and Laura Coates Live follows Phillip's program at 11 p.m. ET. But Phillip's show NewsNight occupies the most coveted three-hour block of evening programming to viewers. Stahl can't mention Fox News host Harris Faulkner in daytime. Maybe young Jay doesn't know who that is. Somehow, Phillip is held out as the Marquee Talent/Role Model for black girls: It is rare for somebody like Phillip to become marquee talent on a broadcast like NewsNight. There are no others who look like her – a Black woman – and none in her age bracket except Kaitlan Collins, 34, a CNN counterpart and personal friend. Ava Thompson Greenwell, a Northwestern University journalism professor whose research explores Black women behind the scenes in the TV industry, said, The reality is she is representing for a lot of Black women, and I think she does a great job. Tim Graham Sun, 04/19/2026 - 14:56 Marketing Timing Regular Search Engine Title Abby Phillip Profiled by USA Today for Calm Leadership on CNN NewsNight CNS Commentary Off