Star Quality Charms Fans Full-Figured, Flamboyant Former Prosecutor Enjoys Role As TV Host
You go, girl. That’s the most common statement written to lawyer-turned-TV commentator Star Jones when she opens her fan mail from her ABC talk show, “The View.”
Letters to Jones are oozing with compliments about being a full-figured, flamboyant and outgoing co-host.
“Viewers are seeing an African-American woman who is very comfortable with herself,” said Jones. “I’m comfortable with my body and who I am…. I wasn’t abused as a child, never did drugs, nor was I on welfare.
“There are more black people like me in the world,” Jones continued, “but they haven’t had a voice. I am honored to be that voice.”
On “The View” on ABC, Jones definitely has a voice. The former Brooklyn prosecutor, who won more than 90 percent of the cases she tried (many of them homicide trials), is known for asking cut-to-the-chase questions and speaking her mind.
Jones’ interview with fashion designer Donna Karan generated an enormous volume of fan mail. During the show, Jones challenged Karan to make affordable business attire to fit plus-size women and women whose bodies are not model-like.
“I had to speak up that day,” Jones said. “We are not all sloppy, poor or lazy. We want to get dressed up, too.”
Speaking up has always been easy for Jones. While other 6-year-olds in her Trenton, N.J., neighborhood were playing with Barbie dolls and reading kiddie books, Jones was “pretending to give summations in a courtroom and reading Town & Country magazine.
“I always wanted to be a lawyer,” said Jones. “My grandmother and I were watching a soap opera when I was a little girl, and one of the characters got in trouble. My grandmother said she needed a lawyer. She said people always need lawyers.”
So after graduating from high school and college, Jones, now 35, went to the University of Houston Law School. She then worked in the Brooklyn district attorney’s office for six years.
“I miss working with victims and the hand-to-hand combat with colleagues,” said Jones. “I miss trying to make things right for people who thought they had no rights at all.”
Jones said she does not miss the bureaucracy of a justice system that doesn’t always work.
But working as a television commentator, she still considers herself a public servant.
Jones had television experience prior to joining Barbara Walters, reporter Meredith Vierra, recent college graduate Debbie Matenopoulos and comedian Joy Behar around a knotty pine table to tape their daily show.
She began her television career as a commentator for Court TV. With her candor and ability to clarify muddy legal issues, she rose to prominence during the William Kennedy Smith and Mike Tyson trials.