Catt Sadler reflects on the show that defined celebrity culture

Catt Sadler remembers where she was when she was hired by E! in 2006.

“I was a local TV girl [and] in the newsroom at the Indianapolis station where I was working,” Sadler, 51, recalls. “I’d just done the morning news and was in an edit bay when my agent called. He told me, ‘I’ve got good news and bad news. The bad news is: You have two weeks to pack up your life, home, children and everything. The good news is: You got the job.’”

It was a life-changing moment for the then-31-year-old reporter and mother of two young boys to be hired by the network that took entertainment news as seriously as 60 Minutes treats its hard-hitting journalism.

“It was February, snowing outside and cold in Indiana,” she tells Yahoo. “I didn’t even call my then husband because I wanted to tell him in person. When I got home, I said, ‘We’re moving to Los Angeles! I’m going to be on this show called The Daily 10!’ It was an absolute dream come true.”

The audition process spanned three months and saw Sadler go up against “all of these nationally known faces and names who I had been watching on TV.” While she had done entertainment news reporting after college in California, she didn’t think it would be a career. “The chances that I would actually get the job were so slim,” she says. “I had to believe I could do it. I dreamed the dream.”

As a new hire, Sadler cohosted The D10, a daily show counting down the top entertainment stories of the day, which debuted in March 2006. She was also a Live From the Red Carpet correspondent, interviewing stars at awards shows. One of her first memories of being on the job was covering the Daytime Emmys in April 2006.

“That was the first time that not only was I live on E!, but I had the pressure of opening the show,” she recalls. “I had the first words — ‘Welcome to Live From the Red Carpet’ — and I was so nervous. It was the most out-of-body experience I ever had. I thought I was going to stop breathing.”

Luckily, Sadler didn’t stumble and became a key part of the network’s coverage. The Daily 10 ran until October 2010, when, after its cancellation, Sadler was integrated into the expanded E! News team first as a correspondent and later as a host.

E! News debuted in September 1991 and was at the core of the cable network’s entertainment coverage. Like Entertainment Tonight, it covered celebrity news, gossip, trends and red carpets. Yet E!’s younger personalities were known for their style and access to A-listers.

The network’s flagship newscast ran for nearly three decades before it was canceled in 2020 during the pandemic. While it was revived in 2022, its end — after more than three decades — was announced in July. The show goes dark on Sept. 25, though it will continue as a digital brand.

Sadler walked away from her dream job in December 2017 amid an equal pay dispute, but her memories of working there are largely happy ones. She looks back at that chapter and on a bygone era in entertainment.

Appointment television

“It was such a charmed moment in Hollywood history,” Sadler says of her era on the show. “It was appointment television. People scheduled their days around tuning in to be entertained and escape their own lives. We weren’t changing the world with entertainment news, but it served a purpose for so many people, and that felt good.”

She joined the ranks of high-profile anchors over the years, including Giuliana Rancic, Ryan Seacrest, Jason Kennedy, Maria Menounos, Adrienne Bailon-Houghton, Jules Asner, Steve Kmetko and currently Keltie Knight and Justin Sylvester. Some of her pinch-me moments included interviews with stars she grew up watching on the big screen.

“There’s a lot that’s happened in the world of Johnny Depp, but as a little girl from Indiana who literally was not only obsessed with him as a beautiful human being — I was so in love with all of his movies — being face-to-face with him on red carpets and interviewing him with regularity was the coolest. He was always so gracious, professional and kind,” she recalls. “Meryl Streep also pops in my mind because she’s such a legend and was always so maternal, lovely and thoughtful. I just was in awe of her every time.”

While the show was known for its steady stream of celebrity gossip — breakups, divorces, arrests and other drama — Sadler says her true interest was always in the “humanity side of celebrity.”

“What also stands out for me is the Lindsay Lohan and the Britney Spears paparazzi craze,” she says of the 2000s era. “I was worried about the person behind the celebrity … and the disease that is fame and what can come along with it. I was always more interested in the psychology of the entertainment world. Still to this day, those are the stories that I pay the most attention to.”

Not always a cakewalk

While Sadler established herself as a favorite on the show and network, she faced some behind-the-scenes challenges. For instance, she’d get notes on her appearance instead of getting kudos for her work, which was disheartening.

“You could work so hard on an interview — prepping for it, spending an hour doing it and then two minutes of it would make the broadcast,” she says. “You put your heart and soul into this stuff, and then you hear absolutely nothing from anyone holding power [above my executive producer’s level] … But boy, we got notes on ponytails and red lips.”

She clarifies that kind of feedback wasn’t constant, but dealing with that criticism was frustrating when she was working so hard.

“It felt so patronizing, especially as a woman who had been on air for all these years,” she says. Not to mention that the female E! News anchors and correspondents “were known for our fashion and beauty. We had the best stylist and glam teams, and … our young audience loved that. It was part of why they watched. So to have these older men giving us notes on our style was like: This is what you’re gonna pick apart? This is why [you think] ratings are down? … Rather than facing the reality of viewing trends changing and maybe our new set that they spent millions of dollars on was ugly … it was our red lips? Come on.”

Her biggest obstacle came in early 2017 when, as her responsibilities grew on the network — landing The Daily Pop in addition to E! News — she discovered that her co-anchor Kennedy made nearly double her salary, despite starting around the same time and having similar job functions. Sadler didn’t blame Kennedy — and still doesn’t — but armed with that knowledge, she asked for a pay increase closer to his salary when her contract was being renegotiated at the end of the year. She never expected to walk away, thinking the network would give her a fair increase, but they hit a wall during negotiations.

“I had to start evaluating my options,” she says. “Do you stay or go? That was a really deep, soul-searching phase. I consulted with other women, because at this time … we were kind of smack dab in the middle of the #MeToo movement [and] conversations were being had about equality in the workplace.”

Sadler ultimately decided that staying would mean compromising her own values.

“It felt like my only choice at the end of the day. I could stay, but it would be doing such a disservice to myself,” she says, adding, “And, yes, the money I was making was good money, but it wasn’t fair money. … I was a single mom, and how do I provide for my kids? There were so many questions I was asking myself, but ultimately I decided to go.”

Leaving was “scary but also very liberating,” says Sadler, who had the support of many female celebrities like Debra Messing and Jennifer Lawrence. And while she never intended her salary to become a public conversation, after it became one, “I felt an obligation to really continue to speak on pay disparity, because I heard from so many girls and women from all over the world. E! News was seen in 120-plus countries at the time. It was a crazy time.”

As for where things stand with Kennedy, they remain friendly, though they’re not constantly in touch.

“I will always love him,” she says. “I don’t hold anything to do with my situation against him. It was not his problem. It was not his decision to make.”

Besides, Sadler landed on her feet. She launched her podcast in 2019, interviewing women shaping culture and motivating listeners to live their best lives. In August, she decided to push pause on it — after an episode reflecting on E! News ending — planning to overhaul it, including moving outside into nature on the 40-acre California property she lives on with her partner, Greg Alterman.

While planning to remain her own boss, she’s plotting to expand and build a team. She’s also working on a memoir, which she’s shopping around.

“I intentionally went away to my own little island for a while, which I really needed,” she says. “But that craving is back, so it’s this ramping up [and] … building something again on a big scale. … I’m retooling, I’m recalibrating.”

When Sadler left E!, it ended her era of being enmeshed in pop culture and entertainment news. She no longer watches or follows the channel, and says that her current interests lie elsewhere. Her new Substack explores “growth, beauty and becoming.”

And while E! News is very much in her rearview, she may tune in to the final episode.

“I hadn’t thought about that,” she says. “But for just the sake of the chapter closing, maybe I will.”