Starlet Marie Jones (born March 24, 1962) is an American Lawyer, Journalist, television personality, fashion designer, author, and women's and diversity advocate. She is best known as one of the original co-hosts on the ABC morning talk show The View, on which she appeared from 1997 to 2006. She was also one of sixteen contestants of the fourth installment of The Celebrity Apprentice in 2011, coming in fifth place.
From 1986 to 1991, Jones was a prosecutor with the Kings County District Attorney's Office in Brooklyn, New York. In 1992, she was elevated to senior assistant district attorney. She was recruited by Court TV in 1991 as a commentator for the william Kennedy Smith rape trial and spent several years as a legal correspondent for NBC's Today and NBC Nightly News. In 1994, she was given her own court show, Jones & Jury, which mimicked the arbitration-based reality format of The People's Court, though with a talk show like set as opposed to a courtroom set. Although the show was canceled after only one year, Jones became the first black person and female to serve as a television arbitrator of a courtroom series.
In 1997, Jones joined The View as one of its original four co-hosts. Jones's nine-season tenure on The View was marked by controversy at times. Jones, who had been diagnosed as morbidly obese, began to undergo dramatic weight loss beginning in 2003. In a September 2007 essay in Glamour magazine, she revealed that she had undergone gastric bypass surgery in August 2003, resulting in a loss of 160 pounds (73 kilograms) over three years. Many criticized Jones for her initial dishonesty when she claimed she had lost weight via diet and exercise. Barbara Walters told Oprah Winfrey in May 2008 that she had kept Jones' gastric bypass surgery a secret because Jones had asked her to, and that lying on the show turned the audience off.
In June 2003, Jones was sued by a landscaping company that alleged she had agreed to give it credit for its work on a rooftop garden for her Upper East Side penthouse duplex in a quid pro quo exchange. The work was done in advance of an article in the October 2003 issue of Architectural Digest. The Smoking Gun website published a copy of a letter she signed which agreed to the deal, but the lawsuit was dismissed in Jones' favor.
Jones married investment banker Al Reynolds on November 13, 2004. Reynolds proposed to Jones during the 2004 NBA All-Star Game. Amid much publicity, the wedding was held at Saint Bartholomew's Church in New York City in front of five hundred guests and featured three matrons of honor, twelve bridesmaids, two junior bridesmaids, three best men, twelve groomsmen, three junior groomsmen, six footmen, four ring bearers, and four flower girls. More than thirty corporate "sponsors" donated wedding attire and merchandise for the event in exchange for mentions in the media and on Jones's website. After the wedding, Jones began using the name "Star Jones Reynolds" professionally, but reverted to "Star Jones" in 2007, telling Entertainment Weekly that she wanted to keep her public persona separate from her private self. On March 9, 2008, Jones and Reynolds announced they were divorcing.
A nonprofit Detroit women's group, Full and Fabulous, accused Jones of theft after they invited her to speak at its "Health, Beauty and Self-Esteem" conference during the 2006 Super Bowl. Full and Fabulous alleged that Jones made changes to her FLIGHT itinerary that doubled the travel expenses the group was paying for, and that she spent the bulk of her time attending Super Bowl parties to promote her book rather than the conference. Jones insisted that she honored all contractual terms of the deal and that the organization fabricated the allegations for the sake of publicity.
On March 7, 2007, Jones announced that she would return to her original network, Court TV—now rebranded truTV—as its new executive Editor of daytime programming, and that she would host an eponymous live weekday talk show based on the law and pop culture. Star Jones premiered on August 20, 2007, as a guest-driven live broadcast (with taped segments) covering recent stories from the worlds of pop culture, entertainment, crime, and justice.
Just six months later, her show was canceled, and it was announced that Jones was leaving truTV due to "changes in their programming selection." The final episode of Star Jones aired on February 1, 2008. Jones received the balance on her $24 million, three-year contract, and the network stated that Jones was eliminated from the channel's lineup because it deemed Jones "too serious" for its tabloid-focused coverage. However, according to The Washington Post, "[Jones's] show averaged 186,000 viewers and, by its final telecast, was down in the neighborhood of 85,000." In January 2011, the talk show was featured among "10 Notable Talk Show Failures" by CNBC.com.
On July 17, 2009, Jones appeared on a Celebrity version of Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?, during which she won $25,000 to benefit The East Harlem School at Exodus House, a New York City middle school for underserved populations.
On March 17, 2010, Jones underwent cardiac surgery related to a surgery she had three decades earlier for a thoracic tumor.
While appearing on "The Professionals" segment of the Today show in July 2012, Jones wondered aloud whether Anderson Cooper opened up about being gay "for ratings." And the famously private Anderson Live host was not happy with Jones. "Star Jones of all people," he said. "I haven't thought about Star Jones in I don't know how long. I was unaware she was even on TV still, but she apparently shows up on a morning show…Anyway, out of the blue Star Jones said after I sent this email, Star Jones said this was a ratings ploy by me to boost ratings."
Jones's contract was due to expire July 13, but after the programme finished on June 27, ABC had discovered Star had released an article with People magazine about her contract not being renewed, and that the decision to leave was not her own, saying, "What you don't know is that my contract was not renewed for the 10th season... I feel like I was fired." The next day, Barbara Walters gave a statement to the audience at the start of the programme revealing that she had been "blindsided," and that Star would no longer appear on "The View". When the series went into summer reruns, only programs in which she had been absent from the panel were rebroadcast. Jones was removed from the opening credits, leaving only Walters, Joy Behar, and Elisabeth Hasselbeck.
In addition, she has made acting appearances on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (where she played a former incarnation of herself—a Brooklyn prosecutor named Star Jones—in the eighth-season finale), and as a judge in Drop Dead Diva in August 2012.
On October 24, 2017, Jones went public with her engagement to Ricardo Lugo, who recently worked in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office.Lugo was employed as an assistant state's attorney from April to August, according to a State’s Attorney’s Office spokesperson. He was one of 17 prosecutors laid off because of county budget issues.
Star Jones married Ricardo Lugo on a cruise ship in the Bahamas on Sunday, March 25, 2018..
Jones is the President of the National Association of Professional Women (NAPW). She created the organization's philanthropic endeavor, NAPW Foundation, to benefit the American Heart Association, of which Jones is also a National Volunteer; the Breast Cancer Research Foundation; Dress For Success and Girls, Inc. Jones also conducts regular visits to NAPW Local Chapters and hosts the organization’s annual National Networking Conference.
