Today’s episode of ABC‘s Tamron Hall show was scotched after a grease fire in an on-set kitchen caused a brief evacuation of the Upper West Side ABC studio where Hall tapes the show.
A rerun of the Monday eclipse episode was aired instead, but in a brief live appearance – watch it below – ahead of the episode Hall stood on the empty, mostly evacuated set and explained what happened.
See the video below.
“Hi everybody, welcome to the show,” she said. “I know this looks a little different around here. I am in fact live in front of a black screen because we have had something happen that’s never happened in the five seasons of the the show. We are not able to air the show scheduled for today.”
After assuring the TV audience that everyone, from staffers to audience members, are okay and without injury, Hall said today’s episode was to have started with a discussion of the viral video clip of Lenny Kravitz sexily working out, but “we had a real smoke show around here.”
The kitchen grease fire drew a response from the New York Fire Department, and about 90 minutes prior to Hall’s live intro the building and studio had been evacuated.
“Now, we’re in the clean-up phase,” Hall said on air, adding that after today the show will resume a planned week of fashion- and hairstyle-related shows. She ended the brief address by thanking the firefighters, the audience and staff for responding responsibly. “We’ll be back live tomorrow,” she said.
Meanwhile, an hour later, the women of The View entered their set to the familiar tune of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire,” with Whoopi Goldberg explaining the next-studio fire at the Tamron show. “We don’t know who started it,” she joked, “we don’t know what started it.” Ana Navarro said she called in for a zoom meeting and saw nothing but flashing lights.
Goldberg added, “Tamron did not start the fire.”