The award-winning journalist is now preparing to launch her first solo anchoring show, ‘The Assignment with Antonia Hylton’
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NEED TO KNOW
- MS NOW anchor Antonia Hylton is opening up to PEOPLE about the support she received from her aunt, veteran journalist Soledad O’Brien, early in her career
- Hylton says O’Brien lent her professional clothes when she was starting out
- Hylton hopes to pay that support forward as she launches her first solo anchoring role, The Assignment with Antonia Hylton, on Saturday, Sept. 12
Before Antonia Hylton had her own anchor chair on MS NOW, her aunt Soledad O’Brien was helping make sure she had something to wear in front of the camera.
Ahead of the Saturday, Sept. 12, premiere of her first solo anchoring show, The Assignment with Antonia Hylton, the 32-year-old journalist tells PEOPLE that O’Brien, 59, was there for her in ways big and small when she was just getting started — even opening up her closet to Hylton when she couldn’t afford a professional wardrobe of her own.
“She gave me so much insight into the way the business worked, so much support,” Hylton says of her maternal aunt. “When I had no money, she lent me nice clothes so I could look professional at my first job when I was making like $38,000 and, you know, could only do so much.”
Now, as Hylton prepares to lead three hours of television on both Saturdays and Sundays for MS NOW, she says her aunt’s generosity has helped shape the kind of leader she wants to be. “I now see my job to sort of figure out, well, how can I be Soledad to somebody else?” she says. “How can I give someone else support? Help them become a better writer every day. Give them space to find their voice on TV.”
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For Hylton, becoming a journalist like her aunt felt like a full-circle moment decades in the making. She still remembers tagging along to O’Brien’s jobs as a child, including a visit to the Today show plaza where she met Al Roker, she says.
“I was so, so nervous but so excited,” Hylton recalls. “I do remember having the thought, ‘I want to come and work here one day.’ I just thought, this is the best job I’ve ever seen.”
But it wasn’t only the excitement of O’Brien’s jobs at NBC News and MSNBC that inspired her. Hylton says watching O’Brien report from New Orleans in the aftermath of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina left an even deeper impression on her. “I had an aunt who would run toward the problem, who wanted to be in community with other people, sit with people in the hardest moments of their lives and tell their stories,” she says.
Hylton calls O’Brien’s reporting from Katrina “some of the most defining journalism of that moment” and says the example her aunt set has stayed with her throughout her own career. “I really think actually the most important moments were seeing that Soledad was always the kind of reporter who cared more about the people she encountered and what they had to say than she was really about herself,” Hylton says. “That’s such an important example to set in this industry.”
For her part, O’Brien says she saw signs of Hylton’s future career long before her niece ever stepped in front of a camera professionally.
“She’s very outgoing, always interested in talking to people, always willing to put herself out there,” O’Brien tells PEOPLE. “I wouldn’t say that she was grilling political leadership at age 2, but definitely somebody who really enjoys talking to people and engaging with people.”
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“She kind of came out of the womb that way, I think,” she adds.
Hylton’s career has since included award-winning reporting, a New York Times bestselling book (2024’s Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum) and work across television, podcasts and documentary journalism. She joined MS NOW in April 2025 and has frequently filled in as an anchor across the network. Still, she admits she was stunned when she learned she would be getting a show of her own.
As she recalls, MS NOW president Rebecca Kutler asked her to stop by her office in what seemed like a routine text. “I thought that maybe she was going to say, ‘Hey, like, you know, I have an idea for a booking or a story we should be doing or feedback on something,’ ” Hylton says.
Instead, Kutler told her she was getting her own program. She was “overjoyed.”
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The news quickly became a family affair. Hylton called her mom, texted O’Brien and then began FaceTiming her siblings. As one of seven children with an extended family scattered around the world, she says telling everyone became “a rolling snowball situation” that lasted about 24 hours.
O’Brien, however, says she wasn’t nearly as shocked. “My reaction was the opposite because it’s so well deserved,” she says. “It’s exactly what I would have expected.”
She describes her niece as “very, very smart” and “not afraid to ask challenging questions,” adding that she’s “super proud” of her. “This new gig is just so well deserved,” she says, “and she’s going to be an absolute superstar because that’s kind of what she keeps doing.”
The Assignment with Antonia Hylton will air Saturdays and Sundays from 1 to 4 p.m. ET, giving Hylton what she calls “a lot of real estate on television” to combine her years of field reporting with longer conversations and original storytelling.
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For the premiere weekend, Hylton tells PEOPLE she recently spent several days along the Texas-Mexico border filming a documentary-style piece about immigration. But she doesn’t want The Assignment to be a platform solely for her own reporting. She hopes the three-hour format can give younger correspondents at the network opportunities to develop their voices and tell stories that may not fit into shorter weekday news segments.
O’Brien is equally enthusiastic about seeing what her niece does with that opportunity.
“What her viewers already see and what new viewers will learn is that she’s just a very smart, interesting, thoughtful human being, which is what you want in someone who’s going to lead you through a show,” O’Brien says.
“I want them to be smart enough to push back. I want them to be interesting enough to help me make sense of what’s unfolding. I want it to be fun,” she adds. “Antonia just, you know, checks every single box on that front and always has.”
And viewers hoping to see the pair share a screen should be in luck. “I have no doubt that you will see Soledad and I, whether it is hanging out on set together or collaborating at different points,” Hylton says, before extending the invitation directly to her aunt: “Let me know what your schedule looks like for the next couple weeks. You have an open invitation on my set.”
For O’Brien, the pride goes well beyond her niece’s latest job title. “I’ve been proud of her, that child, from the minute she was born,” she says. “She’s just a great human being.”
The Assignment with Antonia Hylton premieres Saturday, Sept. 12, and airs Saturdays and Sundays from 1 to 4 p.m. ET on MS NOW.
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