Jess Hilarious’ situation on ‘The Breakfast Club’ is proof of why you can’t let nameless, faceless people block your blessings
OPINION: Jess Hilarious may have valid claims about her treatment after coming back from maternity leave, but her public handling of it is horrible.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Being a human in the public eye can be hard sometimes. While I’ve achieved nowhere near the level of fame and scrutiny of a person like Jess Hilarious—one of the co-hosts of popular culture and interview platform “The Breakfast Club”—the lessons she’s either learning or ignoring in real-time are ones that I’m all too familiar with.
Here’s the quick and dirty backstory: Jess Hilarious, a comedian and internet personality was the successor to Angela Yee, who left her job as a co-host on “The Breakfast Club” to take on her own show at the same station called “Way Up with Angela Yee,” without Charlamagne Tha God and DJ Envy. While Envy, Charla, and Yee played as nice as they could for the camera, it was clear that the relationship, professionally, had run its course. Enter Jess Hilarious. At some point early in her new tenure at the show, Jess got pregnant and went on maternity leave. Loren Lorosa, a producer on the show, was brought in to temporarily (or so they thought) fill in for Jess while she was out.
Jess eventually came back, and Loren’s temporary spot had become more permanent, leading to them effectively sharing air space. There was a lot of chatter behind the scenes and on the internet—culminating in a weeks-old clip of comedian Corey Holcomb (who it seems has a reciprocal beef with Jess Hilarious)—saying that Loren happens to be more talented and better on the job than Jess. Jess apparently spends a lot of time seeing what “the people” think about their show and has been frustrated.
As the conversation grew and grew, Jess hopped on Instagram Live on Tuesday night, and did the most accurate version of professionally crashing out I’ve seen. She took aim at her co-hosts, suggested the space was like being in high school, complained about behind-the-scenes things, took aim at Loren’s space in the situation, though she continually pointed out that she doesn’t have a problem with Loren personally, but how things were handled. Jess is upset that people are coming for her ability to do her job. She doesn’t like it and feels like her team, Charla and Envy (and maybe Loren) haven’t had her back.
She then showed up to work “The Breakfast Club” and they aired it out live on-air. Charla was either trying to downplay it (or being truly dismissive of her concerns by being on joke-time), and Envy was upset that she took her grievances to the public and not to them, something she acknowledged (to a degree) that she had not done. It’s all a mess.
After watching both her Instagram Live and then her response to it, both with and without Loren LaRosa, I can pretty confidently say that Jess’ entire problem is that she’s caught up in the noise of social media and trying her best to fumble her bag because of it. She is a reminder that you cannot let nameless, faceless people block your blessings. At this point, she seems to be on a sabotage mission, though it does seem like a workable situation because everybody else seems focused on resolving it as a team.
While that explanation was much longer than I hoped it would be, I do want to point out something about blocking your blessings, a phrase that is super popular, but extremely accurate in many situations. I’ve been writing professionally for nearly twenty years now, seven of those years as a full-time gig. During the entirety of that time, I’ve had legions of people tell me how trash I am at writing or how stupid my ideas are.
I’ve received death threats. I’ve read comments where people have completely and totally trashed my talent. I’ve also gotten so much more positive feedback than negative. I learned at some point that I can’t be worried about anybody’s perception of my talents or any narrative people that don’t help me pay my bills have. I have to show up and do my job the best way I can; it’s how I got here to begin with.
Jess got that job based on who she was and what she brought to the table. To focus on any negativity from people she doesn’t know, in such a way that makes you actively take on your employer is a bad look. She should just look at her co-hosts who have been mired in so much controversy and nonsense over the years. Have your issues and your concerns but don’t air them out because it almost never goes how you expect it.
Jess’ concerns are likely valid and her feelings are rooted in something. I’m sure maybe even she was surprised by how well Loren was a co-host when she wasn’t there. I’m sure there were things unsaid when she came back and they were all trying to figure out new footing since Loren had been given a spot that previously didn’t exist, alongside Jess and the fellas. But as Charla alluded to at one point, they were having a team meeting in public and they needed to stop that.
I’m sure that both Jess and Loren have very real concerns about the way things are run, but professionally, there’s a time and place to address and handle them. Being in your feelings and then going on a hugely public platform to air out your grievances is not the way to do it, especially not because you “have your feelings.”
Here’s the other part: Jess’ actions might make her employer look hard at her contract when it’s time to re-up. She’s a wild card already, but now she’s willing to make the space look crazy for the sake of her self-interest. I don’t care who owns a company from corporate behemoths to the mom-and-pop shop, that stuff comes up in meetings where decisions get made.
There’s no way there isn’t a conversation that happens about this with higher-ups. Do I think that she will ultimately lose her job? Eh. I doubt it but who knows; I hope not. I know nothing about her contract situation and I think she adds value. I also do think Loren is better at the reporting she does, but that’s not the issue—Jess wasn’t hired to be a journalist, she was hired to be Jess Hilarious.
Hopefully, this all blows over quickly and they can have the necessary convos and meetings behind closed doors and move on. And there are several issues here that could need to be addressed, from how women are treated in the workplace to workplace communication to leveraging power, etc. All of those conversations are at play, but the most important lesson here is that when you have a problem at your job, you don’t air out your job publicly because you’re in your feelings.
Again, it never always goes the way you think. But if at some point we find out Jess is leaving, we’re all going to look back at this moment and she will finally be right about perception… Depending on what we do, sometimes it really becomes our reality.
Panama Jackson is a columnist at theGrio and host of the award-winning podcast, “Dear Culture” on theGrio Black Podcast Network. He writes very Black things, drinks very brown liquors, and is pretty fly for a light guy. His biggest accomplishment to date coincides with his Blackest accomplishment to date in that he received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey after she read one of his pieces (biggest) but he didn’t answer the phone because the caller ID said “Unknown” (Blackest).
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