Sunny Hostin has revealed that she regularly receives “death threats and nasty emails” because her comments on The View are “always” misinterpreted on social media.
The TV presenter, 55, spoke candidly about dealing with personal attacks as she discussed the “fatigue” surrounding the slew of excerpts and articles published ahead of the publication of celebrity memoirs.
She claimed that people accuse her of having a “fake Spanish accent” and being “born with a silver spoon” because snippets of her comments are often “taken out of context,” making strangers think they know everything about her.
“I realize that social media only gives you little clips and a lot of those clips are taken out of context,” she told Brian Teta on The View’s Behind the Table podcast. “And the reason I know this is because it happens to me. It happens to me all the time.’
The View host Sunny Hostin, 55, has revealed she often receives ‘death threats and nasty emails’ from haters
Sunny explained that clips of her debates shared on social media are often taken “completely out of context.”
Sunny, pictured here with her mother. Rosa is half Puerto Rican and Spanish is her first language
She continued, “I get hate mail, I get death threats, I get these nasty emails based on a snippet posted somewhere, completely out of context, and people think they know me. And I wrote a book about my life! All you have to do is read those memoirs and you’ll know everything about me!’
Sunny was referring to her book I Am These Truths: A Memoir of Identity, Justice, and Living Between Worlds, which she released in September 2020.
Expanding on the hate mail, she said, “People say I was ‘born with a silver spoon’… no actually I was born in the Bronx projects, and raised in the south Bronx projects, I was very poor.
‘I’ve heard people say, “oh look at Sunny with that fake Spanish accent”… no, actually I’m half Puerto Rican so Spanish is actually my first language, so if you hear me pronounce something in Spanish , it’s because that’s my language!
‘I’ve heard people say, “oh now she’s Jewish today”… well, my grandfather is indeed Jewish and my mother was raised with two religions, which sounds strange, but that’s just my family!’
Celebrity memoirs have been a topic of discussion on The View in recent weeks, following the hysteria surrounding Britney Spears’ The Woman in Me and Jada Pinkett-Smith’s Worthy – in which she opens up about his marriage to husband Will.
Sunny has been a staunch defender of Jada, calling her “brave” and “courageous” for putting pen to paper to discuss her life and tumultuous relationship.
Sunny recently spoke about her own childhood, revealing how her mother’s “suffering” gave her the determination to “get out” of the Bronx, where her family lived without heat or hot water.
When asked by Paolo Presta what she would say to her younger self now, she replied: ‘It’s going to get so much better. Those were actually tough times.’
When speaking about why she was determined to better herself, she continued, “This would absolutely not be the cycle for my children. And I wanted to get my mother out of there too. My mother suffered… my father was strong, but my mother suffered. We would all get out of that situation.”
Sunny, pictured here with her father William, is accused of lying about growing up in poverty in the Bronx projects
It’s no secret that Sunny, the mother of two, grew up in poverty and she often shares stories about her past on The View
Sunny pictured in November 2022 with her 25-year-old husband Emmanuel Hostin
Sunny also talked about how she “earned trust” and revealed how a CNN producer’s announcement that she wasn’t good enough to anchor her own show left her with insecurities.
“Not only was I told that I would never be able to host my own show, I was used to auditioning other people for the show I wanted to host,” she told Paolo.
‘And I did it for the money. I have two children in school, I have a husband who, even though he’s a surgeon, he likes to do a lot of charity work, which is great… and I kept doing it, and every time I did it, it would affect my self-confidence.’
When Paolo described Sunny as someone who had “so much confidence” on The View, she responded: “People confuse confidence with arrogance. I’m actually the least arrogant person I think you’ll meet because I still have those insecurities.
‘It has created confidence. I only have confidence when I talk about the law, or about the love I have for my children and my husband, I have confidence in that… always. I am confident in my faith, I believe that all people are created equal and are meant to be treated with humanity.
‘I have confidence in all those things and that’s what you see. Other things… I’m not arrogant at all, it’s just the confidence earned with life experience.’