This story originally appeared in La Fronde’s Oct. 15 newsletter.
Through decades of transformation in the media industry, Natalie Morales remains one of the most sought-after journalists on television. But her road to becoming a household name took an unexpected detour.
She got her first job out of college at Chemical Bank (now part of JPMorgan Chase). After a two-year rotational program, Natalie left banking to work behind the scenes at Court TV — and the rest is history, as they say. Her big break came at NBC, where she spent more than 20 years, most famously on the ‘Today’ show, before making her exit in 2021. She went on to ‘The Talk’ and is now at CBS’s ‘48 Hours,’ back to her true crime roots. Her move from the upbeat, fast-paced format of ‘The Talk’ back to true crime reflects what's kept her career going for decades: She's never gotten complacent.
It’s natural to want to hold on to something good and stable, especially in media. Having the guts to walk away and reinvent yourself is something I’ve personally struggled with, so I loved hearing how Natalie got past that fear. We also talked about the con artist interview that went off the rails, sitting across from violent criminals, her most memorable moments on TV and, in Maxed Out tradition, her media diet (and yes, the stock market is on it).
I always love talking to people about career pivots, and one thing that caught my eye in your background is that you worked in banking before journalism. What led to that decision?
My true passion was always journalism. It’s what I studied in college; I was a journalism and Latin American studies double major. But at that time, when I was graduating, looking for a paying job as a journalist was pretty much next to impossible. Chemical Bank, which is JPMorgan Chase now, was recruiting on campus along with a lot of others. I got recruited by Goldman Sachs and a couple of other financial institutions, even though I had maybe one college course — I think I did micro and macro [economics]. I just naturally went there because they gave me a great job offer.
JPMorgan was a great launchpad for me. Whenever I talk to young people — including my own son, who just graduated college and is now in that looking-for-a-first-job-out-of-college phase, which has not been easy — I always say: Of course, know your passions, and really go for what it is you want to go for. But if it’s not happening, don’t be afraid to take one job, and let it be something that’s maybe totally scary, something that intimidates you. Once I got this job, it really allowed me to launch myself on a totally different path. And I knew eventually I would follow my heart once I had saved enough money.
At that point I was looking through The New York Times and saw an ad for Court TV. It was a marketing assistant job, and I felt like my business background was an entry point. It got me my first job in television, and from there I was able to really pivot to what I wanted to do, which was be on air. I sent the reel I put together there out to lots of places, and started off at News 12 The Bronx, which was just launching. It was the best place to be — a tiny cable station just launching, but in the No. 1 market in the country.
Pivots are always very important in life. I think if you’re not pivoting, you’re stagnant, or you’re not going to advance. If you’re happy where you are, that’s great. You’re so lucky to be happy in a job you can stay in forever. But with the way the media landscape is changing so much now, it’s very hard to be in a job like that forever. So I think in our industry, you have to be willing to go with the flow, pivot and always keep exploring passions and those areas that might scare you. You never know — you could be reporting on those too.
That’s a great segue to my next question. You were at ‘Today’ for a long time, and from the outside, at least, it looked like a dream job.
Until you’re waking up every day at 3 o’clock in the morning and going to bed at 7 or 8 o’clock at night, and you do that for 20-plus years. I’d been doing morning television since News 12 The Bronx. I was the morning anchor in Hartford, Connecticut, where I was getting up at 1 o’clock in the morning.
I love the ‘Today’ show. It was and still is my whole family. It’s really where I grew up and learned so much more about TV and news and journalism than I could ever possibly imagine.
On ‘48 Hours,’ you’ve had to do some really tough interviews, not just with victims of crimes but with murderers, too. What’s been the most challenging interview on the show so far?
I remember getting this case about a [victim] named Ray Wright, and the producer said, ‘Can you come do an interview with the guy [who killed Wright]? He was just convicted yesterday. He’s in jail, awaiting transfer, and we’ve got to do it tomorrow in Sacramento.’ So I’m having to read everything about the case, having to digest the opening statements, the closing, the whole thing. I’m having to put the whole case together in a day, so I could go in there and really be informed on what to ask this now-convicted felon, but also give him an opportunity to say what he wanted to say.
Most of these times you have a 20-minute window, on the phone, looking through the glass with the guy in the back, so you wonder if it’s going to translate well. And it paid off. We got everything we needed.
But you’re talking to somebody who has now been convicted of, in this case, not just killing [a] man but mutilating the body. So interviewing somebody who’s capable of doing that — that’s a whole other mindset.
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How do you mentally prepare for an interview like that? Were you able to sleep the night before?
There was a big thing of glass between us. I did a story for ‘Dateline,’ though, where I was sitting right across from [a murderer], and that’s happened a couple of times. I’ve interviewed them in prisons, in maximum-security institutions, and in those cases you’re sitting right across from them. If they don’t like what you ask — thank goodness there’s security around. But it’s still disarming looking into the eyes of somebody who is capable of that kind of inhumanity.
How do you get people to let their guard down and open up about moments that painful?
In cases where you’re interviewing a convicted felon, there’s not a lot of warm-up. You’ve got to go in and get to it, because you don’t have a lot of time. Whereas if I’m interviewing victims, victims’ families or even people who are accused, it’s always going in with a very open mind and open heart. Everybody deserves a chance to tell their story, even if the person’s been convicted. They’re still a person. They want to vent sometimes. Sometimes they’re even bragging about what they did, which is really creepy.
With victims’ families, it’s really just letting them understand that you’re there to help them honor their loved one in the best way possible. And obviously you have to tell both sides of the story, always. Sometimes there’s more than two sides. I think the more they understand you’re doing your job, and doing it as professionally as you can, usually people meet you there.
Over the course of your career, has there been an interview that didn’t go the way you expected?
Oh my gosh, many interviews. One was a true crime story that actually ended up being an episode of ‘Dateline.’ I did an interview for the ‘Today’ show with a man who was posing as a Rockefeller, going by the name Clark Rockefeller.
Oh gosh, I remember this!
You remember that case? I was eight and a half months pregnant when I did the interview. He had just been convicted in Boston, he was in prison, and I’m sitting across from him. Here’s a guy who’s faked having this lilt of an English, very WASPy, Boston Rockefeller upbringing — that’s where he was trying to put himself. Yet he was a German native, Christian Gerhartsreiter. He had faked who he was his entire life, including to his wife and to his daughter, who he had abducted — that’s what he was convicted of. But he was also [later] convicted of murdering [his neighbor John Sohus] when he lived in California. I don’t know if you remember all that.
Oh, I do. That case was wild.
It was one of the wildest cases and the craziest interview I ever did, because he starts quoting poetry and is so clearly intelligent. Yet I’m trying to hold him to the fact that I know who you really are. Everybody knows who you really are. You’re Christian Gerhartsreiter. And asking him, ‘Well, if you’re not, then who is Christian Gerhartsreiter?’ Just trying to pin him down. I’m not a psychologist or therapist, but certainly sitting across from him, you know that there are sociopaths who assume all these identities, and this man had so clearly bought into this whole other identity. It could have been an act, but it was Academy Award-winning.
The whole time, I would start in one direction, and then he starts quoting poetry, and I’m like, ‘You’re quoting Irish poetry to me right now?’ It was bizarre, but I loved it. I loved feeling like a journalist and a psychoanalyst, even though I’m not, trying to figure this guy out.
Is that the story that’s stuck with you the most over the years?
Certainly it was the most odd interview. In terms of storytelling, the stories that stick with me the most are perhaps covering 9/11 — from the one-year anniversary to the five-year anniversary, I was in Shanksville, Pennsylvania — and then the 10-year anniversary of Columbine, I was in Littleton, Colorado. I was in Newtown, Connecticut, I think the day or two after Sandy Hook. Those are the stories that stick with you — not in the good way, but in the life-changing way that you never forget.
And then the uplifting story that I always say is my absolute favorite was covering the Chilean miners when they were rescued, and being with those families in the desert. Just being in the Atacama Desert in Chile is stunning, and being able to tell the most positive, uplifting global miracle survivor story — I think over a billion people watched the coverage of the rescue. Speaking Spanish and being able to communicate with the families — I was there weeks before the miners were rescued, so being able to then go back and see them finally hugging each other and embracing. I was crying as I was telling it. You don’t have a dry eye when you’re telling those stories.
You mentioned how much television has changed, and having started out in cable myself, I’ve seen just how much broadcast has shifted. What do you think is the key to adapting to all the change happening right now?
My upbringing as an Air Force brat was probably the best preparation in life for that. I was moving every two to three years growing up, living on base, then living in other parts of the world. I was born in Taiwan, and I lived in Panama, Brazil and Spain growing up. I think all of those big life changes helped me realize that — and this is something I’m trying to teach my oldest son, who I think has a harder time with making big changes in life like that, like graduating college and finding a job. I say that’s the most exciting part about life sometimes: the not knowing. Yes, it’s really scary.
But I think when you know yourself and trust your gut, and if you’re an open-minded, very social person who can really open up and talk to people, you generally figure things out, and you learn as you go. You don’t have to be perfect. Unfortunately, on live TV, you kind of have to be perfect most of the time.
I feel like the exciting thing about the media landscape changing so much is that it’s forcing us all to be on our toes and have to be better at doing things. Yes, I’m not always going to embrace everything. I still can’t really figure out TikTok. I can watch it. I can go down the TikTok rabbit hole. And social media — I’m not a big poster myself, except when I’m posting things about work, only because my kids are like, ‘Mom, we’re teenagers. We don’t want to be on your social media.’ So it’s up to them. I’m like, ‘Will you allow me the one seasonal holiday picture on the post?’
As my oldest son told me, ‘Mom, it’s not quantity, it’s quality.’ So I’m like, yes, good reminder from my at-that-time teenage son, who’s now 22 years old.
I’d love to hear about your favorite corners of the internet. What do you like to read, watch and listen to?
For sure, my morning feed is always Jim Cramer — what the market’s going to open, how it’s going to open, what it’s looking like, the futures market — from CNBC. Having talked to Cramer many times, I value his advice and his read on the markets. And from CNBC to MS NOW to CNN, of course, I’m news-obsessed. CBS News, NBC, you name it. I have every app on my phone for every news media organization. I’m a news junkie.
In terms of my apps and the things that I love, I would say the New York Times Cooking app. I love to cook — I have a cookbook — so that’s one of the things I always turn to when I need a little inspiration to figure out dinner. On the finance side, there are a lot of sites besides CNBC: The Motley Fool and a couple of others. Schwab will send out their market points. Katie Couric being a friend, Katie Couric Media. HuffPost — I was just at an event with Arianna Huffington the other day, so it was nice to reconnect with her. And Maria Shriver — her Sunday Paper, I think, is just so beautifully done, always such great, poignant information and essays that I love to read. Whenever she does interviews and podcasts, you really feel her heart in everything. So those are some of my newsy things.
Is there a place you go online that might surprise people? A guilty pleasure, maybe?
For those who don’t know me, a lot of people are like, ‘Wait, you started off in finance?’ And then when I tell them, ‘Oh yeah, I love trading stocks,’ they’re like, ‘Oh God!’ And then we go down the whole stock rabbit hole.
I guess something that’s somewhat new is that I started competitively horseback riding four or five years ago. It’s something I got into right before COVID, and then it was my salvation and my sanity during COVID, because it was the one thing we could do outside: get on the horse and ride.
I’ve ridden a couple of times, and it’s so therapeutic.
That is my therapy.
Also, congratulations on the new season of ‘48 Hours’! Is there anything you can share about what people can expect?
I can tell you about one story I’m really excited about. It was a local story here in L.A. I’m not going to give away too much information, but because I’m half Brazilian, it allowed me to speak Portuguese to one of the family members of the victim. And it is the one story — I’m only going to leave you with this big tease — that put me in the strangest, oddest place, and in the strangest, oddest position of my life.
Okay! Now that’s a cliffhanger, Natalie! I’ll be tuning in.