“Access Hollywood’s” Giselle Fernandez once asked Barbra Streisand whether the superstar was one of the following: actress, producer, singer, director, activist or a witch (she actually used a word that sounded like witch).
“She said, `Well . . . that’s not a fair question. Aren’t you a tennis player and a horseback rider and a reader and a journalist?’ ” Fernandez recalled.
“Don’t we all have many aptitudes? Yes, but when you get under the spotlight and you’re only seen for one aptitude, and that is what your entire image is based upon, then when people start seeing you try to break out in a different venue, it’s more difficult to sell.”
That was one explanation why Fernandez, co-host of the syndicated show business magazine, is at a comedy festival dominated by Latino talent.
As part of a pay-per-view television special scheduled for November, Fernandez delivered a top-nine list of reasons why there should be more Latinos on television (the joke is that a top-10 list was too expensive) along with actor-comedian Cheech Marin and actress Liz Torres. (No. 1 was, “Don’t forget, we still need you to be on `Cops’ every night.”)
But just because Fernandez was joking it up on stage didn’t mean she was going to become the next Barbra Streisand. She was at the Latino Laugh Festival “as a devoted and supporting member of my community, to be with these wonderfully talented people, and to offer the kind of support that I can, as a national personality, as a journalist, as Giselle Fernandez.”
As a journalist, Fernandez was known for covering primarily hard news, working for NBC’s and CBS’ news operations in various capacities, before reporting on the glitz and glamor of Hollywood. That transition proved to be “interesting at times, difficult for sure,” she said.
“I grew up in a very rigid arena, where the (Edward R.) Murrow tradition had been handed down,” said Fernandez, 36, a journalist since graduating from Sacramento State University in 1983.
A show like “Access Hollywood,” which is heading into its second season, is “more honest about being entertaining and theatrical as opposed to news, which says no, just to slap out the facts,” Fernandez said. “And so in that sense it’s been difficult.”
The native of Mexico City said the show, which is produced by NBC and New World Entertainment and is seen weekdays on WMAQ-Ch. 5 at 6:30 p.m., is “in transition. But we are growing and doing quite well.”
That transition includes getting a new co-host. Larry Mendte, who like Fernandez used to work at WBBM-Ch. 2 in Chicago, left “Access Hollywood” to become a news anchor in Philadelphia. She said the producers are looking at CBS sportscaster Pat O’Brien, who has subbed on “Access” rival “Entertainment Tonight,” and others.
Fernandez has been seen in many different lights. But for a time while in Chicago, a lot of that light was negative.
She was at Channel 2 for two years starting in 1987. “I felt like such a cub reporter,” Fernandez said about the job, her first big television gig.
Fernandez worked for former WBBM news director Ron Kershaw, whom “I fell madly in love with.” Fernandez had to watch Kershaw succumb to pancreatic cancer, dying in July 1988 at 44.
Only two months after Kershaw’s death, Fernandez took heat for what she calls one of the biggest scoops of her career: accused cocaine kingpin John Cappas, who turned himself in to Fernandez after his indictment on federal drug charges in September, 1988.
Some news pundits questioned Fernandez’s coupe, alleging she was partying with the guy in a bikini while boating on a lake, among other things. “It’s all a lie,” she said. “It was an effort to put me down at the time.”
Cappas gave himself up to Fernandez and her camera crew at a cabin near a lake as an exclusive. She was to surrender him to agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration in Chicago. She said former Channel 2 reporter Jim Avila, with whom Fernandez consulted, called then-U.S. Atty. Anton Valukas, who gave his blessing to the deal.
While at the cabin, a friend of Cappas’ asked if he wanted to join him for one more ride on his boat before he went to jail. Later, Cappas wanted to stop for pizza and a beer. “Every step of the way I informed management of my dealings,” Fernandez said.
“I learned a tremendous amount” from that incident, Fernandez said. “I learned how mean and political and horrible people can be to you.”
She said because it was early in her career, the incident “typecast me as a young woman and always with the sexual connotation. And I think that was very unfortunate for me. . . .
“But I have nothing to regret in terms of how I got that story. I got it fair and square. I worked my butt off to get it, and I got slammed and never got the rewards I should have. But having said all that, would I go through that again? I don’t believe you should have regrets. I believe you learn from everything.”
