Fox & Friends' Janice Dean on Her Behind-the-Scenes Battles
Her story is one of resilience. Fox & Friend’s anchor and meteorologist Janice Dean has always found the silver lining in every cloud, no matter what challenge she faced. In this interview, Janice is here to reveal the truth about the stormy days of her past in her new book Mostly Sunny: How I Learned to Keep Smiling through the Rainiest Days. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In broadcasting, I've always, unfortunately, every job that I've gone through, I've had to deal with some sort of awkward moments or weird comments or a power dynamic between a man that is higher up or a boss.
So I've always been able to walk that line of laughing it off or removing me from an awkward situation or telling him I have a boyfriend, reminding him I have a boyfriend.
Hi, I'm Dr. Oz, and this is the Dr. Oz Podcast. podcast.
Her story is one of resilience.
Fox& Friends anchor and meteorologist Janice Dean has always found the silver lining in every cloud, no matter what challenge she faced.
Today, Janice is here to reveal the truth about the stormy days of her past in her brand new book, Mostly Sunny, How I Learned to Keep Smiling Through the Rainiest Days.
I love all the meteorological allegories here.
Why speak out now?
What made you want to come forward?
These are private issues.
A lot of folks don't tell even family about them.
Well, some of these stories my husband hadn't even really gone into detail with, or I hadn't told him about a lot of these, you know, stories that maybe he knew sort of the surface of.
An example being in Houston when I had the home invasion, he knew that that had happened to me, but he didn't know the detail.
And I remember giving him that chapter and he said, okay, let me read it tonight by myself.
And I went to bed.
And the next morning I woke up and I could tell, you know, it was different because he didn't know the detail.
He didn't know how it affected me profoundly.
And I also think he felt like he wished he was there to protect me.
Actually, let's might as well start there.
We're going to go back.
I have some questions from even earlier in your life, but tell me about the home invasion of Houston.
What happened and the miracle that you're still here?
Yeah.
Well, I still, I mean, writing it, it brings you back because I think I kind of closed the door on it for a little bit.
I have to say I think about it every day, whether it's when I open the door to go outside or I make sure that I've double locked the doors or I put the security system on.
I think about it every day, and even though I escaped relatively unscathed, it still left emotional scars on me.
So I was living in Houston, living on my own, and I was in a first floor apartment.
In what they call a luxury apartment building.
And so I never felt unsafe.
I grew up in Canada, and we didn't ever have issues of home invasions in Canada.
I mean, I'd never seen a gun in my life.
You know the old story about leaving your doors unlocked?
I mean, we kind of lived that.
So living in a big American city like Houston, I didn't even really think that I would ever find myself facing a robber.
But one night, I had left the window open ever so slightly because it was a cool night in Houston, which is so rare.
And you know, you're always in a state of air conditioning.
So I thought, I'll leave the window open and get some fresh air.
Forgot to close it.
I just remember I was being poked in my shoulder and I woke up and I had this man sitting next to me on my bed, you know, six inches away from my face with a knife.
And my first reaction was to say hi to him.
I don't know where that comes from.
It was just like, hi, can I help you?
I didn't panic.
I mean, my heart was racing, obviously, and I knew what was going on, but I was very steady and calm.
And I just said, can I help you?
What do you need?
And he basically motioned for me to start taking off my clothes.
So I immediately...
I have money.
I have jewelry.
I have a new car.
I'll give you all of it.
And he just sort of said, no, I want you to take your clothes off.
So I sleep with a lot of layers.
I sleep with sweatpants and a t-shirt.
Just in case.
I mean, I'm always cold.
But you know what, Dr. Oz?
I feel like that might have also saved my life.
Because I had time to keep taking layers off.
And meanwhile, I keep telling him, I have money, I have jewelry.
I mean, I made it sound like I had so much money in jewelry when I didn't.
And so I proceeded to take off Clothing.
And I was down to my underwear.
And I just thought to myself, okay, well, this is probably going to be bad.
So I'm just going to pretend that my mind is disconnected from my body.
So whatever he does, I'm just going to lay here and not react.
And he just then decided, okay, I'm going to take her jewelry.
Okay, show me where your jewelry is.
And so I got out of the bed and meanwhile I'm thinking in my mind, okay, what do I do next?
What do I do next?
I gave him all my jewelry and then I said, okay, let's go get the money.
And we walked into the living room and I noticed that my purse was already, he had already gone through my purse.
So he had taken the money and I remember thinking to myself, okay, what do I do now?
And there was a really loud, it was either like a car alarm or it sounded like a gunshot.
I'm not sure what it was, but it both startled us to the point of he ran out of the apartment.
And that's when I broke down and started screaming.
And after going through a therapist, she had said to me, the fact that you remained very calm also might have helped you.
Because I think a lot of these guys, when you get upset and you start screaming, that excites them.
So the fact that I was very calm and I just spoke to him very matter-of-factly might have also saved me.
But it still happened.
It was still an invasion of my space and my And to this day, it's still with me.
Where does the calmness come from?
I mean, you speak in Mostly Sunny about, even in high school, there were times when it wasn't so sunny outside for you.
Yeah.
I'm not sure.
I'm in a business of connecting with people and talking to people, and I've always wanted to be a broadcaster ever since I was five years old.
I mean, I start the book about being outside and interviewing some of my friends like I'm a reporter.
So I've always had a good way to connect with people, and I feel that that maybe helped me somehow.
Even though this stranger was in my bedroom probably wanting to do terrible things, I was just very calm and wanted to start a conversation with him.
I don't know where that comes from.
I don't know.
Well, you speak in the book about episodes of bullying.
Mm-hmm.
And that's often, you know, with bullying, you don't know how to act.
You don't want to be calmer so they don't think it's fun anymore because they're coming after the prey.
But then again, you want to defend yourself and being calm makes it seem like you're docile sometimes.
Right.
I try to be friends with them all the time.
You know, I... It's funny because I remember one particular girl that used to bully me, and all I wanted to do is just be friends with her.
I couldn't understand why she didn't like me for some reason.
And at the end of 8th grade, so the bullying probably started early 7th grade.
At the end of 8th grade, she finally came up to me one day and said, Do you want to come over to my house tonight and we can do homework or something?
And I thought, Oh my gosh, I finally got through to her.
You know, I finally...
You know, there are other episodes where I've had people that have bullied in my life that I, you know, didn't become friends with.
But I think I've always just maybe I've been a people pleaser or somebody that maybe thought I could get through to even the mean kids.
Have any of the people that you mentioned in the book come back and approached you, connected with you again?
Any of the bullies from school?
I'm always curious about that because there's always those conflicts in school that they're often perceived in very complex ways, not the way you'd anticipate.
I'm friends with that girl on Facebook.
You are?
Yeah.
I've always wanted to reach out and say to her, what was it about me that you wanted to tease?
Was it because I didn't look like you?
You know, I was always heavy.
I was a heavy kid.
But I never did.
But she's, you know, we're friends on Facebook.
And I just want to just not even think about it.
Since you bring up food, how have you used food differently in different points of your life?
Well, growing up, I... Ate a lot.
I think I saw the relationship my parents were having.
It wasn't a happy one.
I never really saw my dad very much.
I knew my mom wasn't very happy at home.
Maybe I wasn't getting the attention that I thought I deserved.
I think that part of the reason I wanted to be a performer was because I never could really get their attention as much as I wanted to.
I would see them watching CNN all the time.
And I think I was like, well, maybe if I was on television, maybe they would pay attention to me.
So I always think I got into this business to sort of like say, hi, mom and dad, here I am.
But I used to soothe myself with food.
My mom, you know, took me to a doctor at an early age and said, you know, my daughter has an eating problem.
Like she's...
She doesn't want to go to school.
People tease her.
And so I was on diets when I was probably 8 or 9, 10. And, you know, I realized that food wasn't something I should be eating because I would gain weight.
But then when she would leave the house, I would go and I would find all the cookies and sweets that she would hide that my brother could eat and I would eat them.
How did you break the cycle?
Because you certainly don't look like you have any issues now.
You broke the cycle.
I... I think I will always have a love-hate relationship with food.
But now that I have children who are 8 and 10, and I see my oldest sometimes wanting to eat more than he probably should, I see that in him.
But instead of pointing it out to him, I... I don't do what my mom was, and that was constantly be at him or me.
You can't eat that.
You shouldn't be eating that.
The doctor said you can't eat that.
So I go up and down.
But I also talk about it in the book.
I'm in this profession where women are thin, and that's what people look like on television.
And now I kind of pride myself on being a little bit different.
So I'm an 8 to 10, which...
Size 8, 10. And I'm actually very proud of the fact that I'm, you know, normal sized.
There's lots more when we come back.
Can I pursue this issue of bullying in your life?
Because you're modest about your success.
I'll be brag on you.
But you work with some of the most iconic people in the business.
And two of them in particular have mixed reputations.
I've gotten to meet both of them.
So I realize there are different sides to their stories.
But it's your book.
It's your story.
So I'd like to ask you about first Don Imus.
A guy who's dominant on radio, has done many philanthropic things, but has a mixed reputation.
When you go out and take chances saying things that you believe to be true, not everyone's going to like it.
But he can be tough on folks.
And I love to know more about your relationship with him.
Well, we don't have a relationship.
He did come out when the book came out and there were articles written about how he treated me abusively.
He did issue a statement and said something to the effect of, I always liked Janice Dean.
And the stories she tells certainly make for a good book, but none of that happened.
I have people I've worked with, other women that have worked with him that have reached out to me and said, thank you so much for finally saying something.
He was obviously the character that you saw on the air.
You know, he would put people in their place or he would joke with them or sometimes be You know, mean on air.
And he certainly was that way with me.
But off air, he was also not a nice person.
When I first got there, I was told basically, you know, don't look at him when he comes in.
Don't address him until he addresses you.
If you do something that he doesn't like, you will hear about it.
He, you know, cursed me out, called me fat and stupid and...
There would be the very rare moment where he would say, oh, you're doing a good job.
And I would think, oh my gosh, that little moment where, yes, he thinks I'm doing a good job.
I'm going to keep doing this and maybe things will change.
And then he would go back to the mean, abusive behavior.
And I actually have people that still remember me from Imus.
The one year that I worked for him, it made a big impact on people who listened.
And they would say to me, I'm so glad that you got out because I could even hear it on the air that he would, you know, he would treat you badly.
And what's this bullet story?
He would name bullets after people.
Is that real?
He carried a gun around with him when we worked at WFAN.
And we knew it was loaded because he would, on a fairly regular basis, take the bullets out of the gun and name them after all of us.
He thought it was funny, but we were all sort of like...
I mean, we would joke about it in the hallways, but I think it was a way of survival.
Can you believe what we're going through?
And people knew, the management knew, but he was making too much money for them to be able to threaten.
Did they ever use the gun?
Did they ever point it at anybody?
Yes, yeah.
There was a traffic reporter there, and we would all be out in the newsroom, and he would come out of the studio.
And again, he would kind of snicker under his breath that it was kind of a joke, but he'd point the gun at the back of her head because she was not facing him.
So he'd come back and he would point it right at her head and we would be standing there.
And he would also threaten people.
I write about, there was an intern one day and he was starstruck by Imus.
And we all told him and warned him, like, don't look at him, don't talk to him.
But, you know, his idol was walking into the room.
And I remember Imus just knew that he was watching him and would say, you know...
Don't, you know, stop looking at me or I'm going to, you know, I'm going to shoot that beanie off your head so fast.
And, you know, he was Jewish.
So and, you know, we were all sitting there shell shocked a little bit.
I thought to myself, I hope that this young man goes and tells his dad that, you know, his idol just basically said he was going to.
Shoot his head off if he kept looking at him.
What would bother him?
And how did it impact you?
Because this is more your story.
When you can't make sense about what someone's doing, I have to assume he thought it was funny or at least gallows humor.
Right.
I don't understand why else you'd get mad at a fan looking at you.
I don't know.
I... I think he treated women differently as well.
He had a meaner streak with women.
And I always thought to myself, maybe I reminded him of someone, maybe his mom or an ex-wife of a lady who, I don't know, jilted him or something.
Maybe that's why he was meaner to me.
But he did it to all of the other guys, too.
The guys that I used to work with, I've talked to them since after the book came out, and they have said to me, you know, good for you.
Just know that we went through it, too.
But he still wields some power because I was supposed to go on a radio show with one or two of the people that I worked with, and it was canceled.
And I heard it was because Mr. Imus said, don't have her on the program.
I mean, I can't judge.
I wasn't there.
It's just, you know, when you hear these things, I just try to make sense of them.
Of course.
Of course.
I still, you know, I was warned before I took the job, but you have to understand, I'm a kid from Canada with this opportunity to work in New York City with one of the biggest broadcasters.
I would have taken the job in a second.
Of course.
Definitely.
But I knew very quickly that it was not going to be a great job for me.
And so, you know, I tried my best to get through it.
I kept thinking that maybe he would like me, like the bullies that I would try to make friends with.
Maybe he did like you.
That's the thing here.
Maybe that's how he treats people he likes.
Yes, because if he's walking around, people he works with are probably people he likes.
I mean, Don will have to speak for himself.
I'm just saying from your perspective, I can understand why it's confusing or worse.
I do remember the day that I said that I was going over to Fox News and my program director went in to tell him, And he went on the air and actually said, oh, I heard that pig Janice Dean is going over to work for Fox.
They can have her.
And someone told me afterwards that he was really mad that I didn't come talk to him first before I went over to Fox.
And I thought to myself, wow.
So if I had gone into him and said, I'm thinking about going somewhere else where they actually might treat me all right, would he have been nicer?
I don't know.
I don't know.
So you go to Fox and Roger Ailes is there.
Roger...
God rest his soul.
He's passed, but he had a complex relationship, I'll say, with some people there too.
Yes.
How did that work for you?
Well, you know, Nothing is black and white.
You know, I think people like to paint these people as, you know, either terrible, evil people.
Pariahs or saviors.
Right, exactly.
And with Roger, I still have a soft spot for him, even though, you know, early on in my career, he did say inappropriate things, made me feel very uncomfortable, and was a pattern of behavior with some of the women.
So what kinds of things would he say that was overlooked, forgiven...
Well, listen, I mean, I in broadcasting, I've always, unfortunately, every job that I've gone through, I've had to deal with some sort of awkward moments or weird comments or a power dynamic between some a man that, you know, is higher up or a boss than, you know, somebody, is higher up or a boss than, you know, somebody, a worker like me.
So I've always been able to walk that line of laughing it off or removing me from an awkward situation or telling him I have a boyfriend, reminding him I have a boyfriend.
So when Roger would make advances, my first job interview with him was in his office.
Nothing inappropriate happened.
I actually thought he was so very charismatic and funny and just thought he was great.
The second job interview was in a hotel lobby bar that was set up by one of his secretaries.
And it was almost like a date.
I think it was probably 3 o'clock.
I had told my agent that this meeting was happening.
And she just said, oh, he probably just wants to go off campus.
And we sat down.
He asked me to order a drink.
And I remember it was like 3 or 4 o'clock in the afternoon.
And I ordered a drink.
And he ordered the same.
And then we made small talk.
He said, I've been thinking a lot about you.
And then he reached over and grabbed my hand and said, have you been thinking about me?
And I was like, uh...
I've been thinking that I maybe want a job.
And, you know, do you have a boyfriend?
And you look so pretty.
And I just thought, oh my gosh, this is the weirdest interview I've ever been on.
But I thought it was weird, but I wasn't alarmed by it.
It was just, maybe he wants to have an affair, and I probably am not going to get this job, but I'm not attracted to him.
And then he said, listen, I'm still thinking about you for a role on Fox.
Let me think about it a little bit more.
And he said, I better go, you know, we don't want people seeing us together or something like that.
So then he left and I was like, okay, that was strange.
I probably am not going to get a job there.
And then I would say probably a few days later, I get a phone call.
In my apartment, his assistant says, Janice Dean, I've got Roger Ailes on the phone.
Would you take the call?
I said, yes.
And he gets on the phone and he says, how are you?
And I said, oh, I'm great.
And he said a few things.
I've been thinking about you.
And I said, oh, great.
He said, I've been thinking about you over at Fox.
He said, but, you know, I've been thinking a lot about whether, I mean, how are you at phone sex?
I just thought, I thought, oh, Oh, well, my comedic instinct kicked in and I said, I am terrible!
I'm terrible, as a matter of fact.
He said, well, you have a boyfriend, you know, you must do that with him.
And what if I was your boyfriend?
I said, no, actually, I've never done this type of thing before.
And thankfully, then he said, well, I want to hire you at Fox.
Oh my goodness.
And so I just...
I always thought maybe he was joking around or he maybe wanted to have an affair and was just waiting for me to say that I would or not.
And then he hired me at Fox.
And to be honest with you, after that, there were weird comments when I would go into his office.
I certainly was privy to the spin process.
Where he would tell us to spin around, let me take a look at you.
But honestly, I didn't think anything of it.
We're in a visual business.
He wanted to, you know, see how I looked on television.
And then it kind of stopped from there.
You know, he would always ask me if I had a boyfriend.
And I always did have a boyfriend.
So I feel like...
Did he ever make passes at women who did have boyfriends or were married?
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Megyn Kelly.
I mean, we talked a lot when...
But Megyn was married now, but was she married when he was making passes at her?
You know what?
No, she was divorced.
So I feel that he would ask these questions and see how you responded.
And I think, you know, some women said yes, you know?
But I never...
You know, it didn't go on.
He didn't keep doing it.
And I enjoyed my job there.
I really enjoyed it.
And people say, why did you go over there if he was like that?
And my response is, I've had to deal with this kind of thing my entire career.
And the job previous to that, there was a man with a gun that would name bullets after me.
And I liked New York, and I had just met my boyfriend, Sean, who I went to marry.
Did the women who worked at Fox have an unspoken agreement of how to deal with all this?
Yes.
We all sort of, especially with Megan, you know, we would go out to lunch and we would just sort of, you know, Gently, like, hey, were you ever in a meeting with Roger where he would say something like this?
It was all sort of like, oh, that's Roger being Roger.
But we never knew the extent to what we now know.
It was always just he would test the waters and see how that went.
So you never talked to Gresham, for example?
She wanted to know about my story.
I did tell her about my experience with him a couple of times.
But she never told me about her experience.
So were you surprised when she came out?
Yes.
I was.
She would always, you know, I wouldn't say we were good friends, but we were friendly enough that we would talk that, you know, when she would go into his office, she would always say, oh, of course he's Roger being Roger.
But I was shocked when I found out that he was being very inappropriate with her to the point of she launched a lawsuit.
And I think that's when all of us realized, the ones that had these kinds of stories, that it was important for us to go in to the lawyers to tell our stories, even though we never thought he was going to be fired.
We thought Gretchen would lose that case.
We never thought Roger was going to leave.
Just because he was so powerful.
He was very powerful.
And we didn't really believe to the extent that maybe we now know how pervasive it was.
And, you know, we still don't really know.
I can only tell my story.
You know, I can only tell you what I experienced with him.
I never felt like he was going to touch me or do anything wrong.
Do you feel reaffirmed that the organization managed Roger the way they did?
I do.
I feel like they acted very quickly.
And that's a testament to Mr. Murdoch and his sons.
And we sort of formed an underground army of women who found each other.
And even though we thought Roger was never going to leave, it was important for us to To tell Paul Weiss our story so that if Roger wasn't guilty of these things, he would still be there.
So that's what we thought.
We thought if it wasn't bad, if it wasn't pervasive enough, then he would survive.
But if this was behavior that was worthy of being fired, then the law should prevail.
More questions after the break.
In the middle of all this, you get a diagnosis that people don't want to hear.
Multiple sclerosis.
I'm struggling always when people have chronic illnesses with admiration about how you juggle all the balls when someone throws you the extra ball and then holds one of your hands behind your back, which sometimes is literally what's happening with MS. So how did that play a role in your career as you're accelerating and succeeding at the same time dealing with issues that are at least confusing, I'll say, maybe more than that?
So, I was diagnosed in 2005. I had gotten my job at Fox in 2004, and I thought it was going to be the end of my career, because I didn't know anything about MS. I, you know, I... I knew that Montel Williams had it.
I saw a wheelchair when I thought of MS. When I was giving that diagnosis, I really thought, oh my gosh, everything that I had ever worked for in my life, including having a great boyfriend, was probably going to leave me.
But I was lucky that I worked with somebody that also had MS, and that's Neil Cavuto.
And he has not only battled MS, but also had cancer.
So it was Roger, going back to the wonderful side of Roger, that when I told him, he said, don't worry about it.
We'll help you in any way we can.
And I think you need to talk to Neil.
Neil has this.
And he'll, you know, he'll be able to sort of be a good shoulder for you and somebody who can help you understand the illness.
So I was lucky to have Neil, who was on TV, who was working at Fox, and somebody that I could go and talk to that had the same thing, but that it wasn't stopping him.
I feel like Neil, had he not been in my life, I don't know that I would have been able to tell my story or felt secure enough to tell other people.
Because a lot of people told me, don't tell anyone that you have this.
That your career would probably not flourish and having something chronic, you're probably going to be out of work for a long period of time.
But he was able to sort of make it be okay for me to have a safe place to be able to talk about it and also feel like the company was going to back me up.
You call mostly Sonny a love letter to folks with chronic illness.
Yeah.
I'm just curious how you use that and why you use that phraseology.
Because when I was diagnosed and I really was at the darkest point in my life, where again, I used to think, oh, living in New York City and having this great career, and this was really what gave me so much self-confidence and made me feel like I was doing something important with my life.
When you're diagnosed with MS and you're told that you're going to have this for the rest of your life and there is no cure, then you're in a really dark place.
And all I wanted to do...
Is find people that were doing okay.
And I tried to find books of people that were living with MS. I read Terry Garr's book.
I read Montel's book.
I read Meredith Vieira's husband's book as well.
Richard Cohen's book.
And even in his book, he kind of said, don't tell your employer, you know, this is a terrible illness.
And it was all very bleak.
But at the time, I was looking for hopeful stories.
So I think my answer to that is, hopefully this book might be a book that someone will read That will make them feel that there's hope.
That if this girl has this but is still doing well and is still doing a great career and has two beautiful boys and a great husband and is very happy and living a full life, then that might give them the hope that they need to get through the next chapter in their life.
My wife always has questions.
You must have answered them so beautifully that you...
How come I never get that?
I never get silence when I answer questions.
I just get another question and another question.
This is very good at asking the extra question.
What's the extra question?
Is it a bonus question?
No, my question is for people listening who don't know where to turn with something like MS is a complicated...
It is complicated.
No one is the same.
It's like a thumbprint, right?
We're all very different.
Some of us have progressive forms of the illness where people are in wheelchairs and go a steady decline.
But there are many of us now that are doing well because we have better medications.
Even 15 years ago when I was diagnosed, there was only a handful of medications.
Now we have like over a dozen.
And I'm on something brand new that I think is making me feel better.
I also talk about finding the right doctor.
That is so important.
I went through some not-so-great neurologists that maybe were smart but didn't give me that connection that I needed, that contact.
You're giving somebody a pretty dire diagnosis.
I would hope that you can at least give them some empathy as well.
I don't know that they...
What is that?
What does that look like?
She's asking the forecast.
The forecast for MS. Use weather metaphors.
Only weather metaphors.
Mostly sunny.
And you'll notice that the initials of mostly sunny are MS. Oh, very clever, Janice Dean.
But I didn't notice that until I saw the cover, to be honest with you.
Isn't that crazy?
Fate.
So, I mean, listen, everybody's different, but I believe because I was diagnosed relatively early when we saw the symptoms, that helped me a great deal.
I look at Selma Blair, and she's doing wonderful things for people who are diagnosed with MS. But I'm so mad because I wish she was diagnosed sooner.
I feel like she probably had these symptoms and didn't know what they were.
And had she been diagnosed when I was diagnosed 15 years ago, maybe she might, you know, be living a little bit better.
But, you know, I'm hopeful.
I'm hopeful.
My neurologist, every time I walk in, she's like, we're getting there, JD. We're getting there.
You know, the The medications are better.
And if not a cure, maybe a stop to the progression of the disease.
I think it's mostly sunny for you too.
If you want to hear more from Janice Dean, check the book out.
It's very well done.
How I Learned to Keep Smiling Through the Rainiest Days.
