Chris Wallace Interview Show to Debut on HBO Max, Air Weekly on CNN

The first three episodes will drop on the streamer on Sept. 23 before highlights air in a combined one-hour special on CNN

Chris Wallace (CNN)

Chris Wallace is returning to the small screen. The anchor’s interview show “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace?” will debut on HBO Max later this month.

The first three episodes of the series will hit the streamer on Sept. 23. The best moments from the episodes will air in a one-hour slot on CNN on Sept. 25. That format will continue for the first season’s entire 10-week run.

“I am excited to be back in the studio having candid, real conversations with a rich variety of guests who are standouts in their fields,” said Wallace. “I can’t wait for the HBO Max and CNN audiences to get to see what our team has been working on.”

Wallace’s show has been kicked around quite a bit, after he left Fox News to host the show for the now-defunct CNN+. Then, the streaming service was shut down 30 days after it launched by parent company Warner Bros. Discovery.

“Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace” explores the CNN anchor’s “wide range of interests across the spectrum of news, sports, entertainment, art, and culture – from interviews to conversations, and from headlines to smart, sensible, in-depth discussions.”

Season 1 will include interviews with Tyler Perry, Shania Twain, Alex Rodriguez, James Patterson, Michelle Zauner and more.

Of his Fox News exit, Wallace said in March that working at the network had become unsustainable. “I’m fine with opinion: conservative opinion, liberal opinion,” Wallace told the The New York Times in an interview. “But when people start to question the truth — Who won the 2020 election? Was Jan. 6 an insurrection? — I found that unsustainable.”

“Before, I found it was an environment in which I could do my job and feel good about my involvement at Fox,” Wallace told the Times. “And since November of 2020, that just became unsustainable, increasingly unsustainable as time went on.”

Wallace’s show comes at a time of major transition for CNN, which has lost several top talent over the past few weeks including Brian Stelter and John Harwood as new CEO Chris Licht attempts to establish a more neutral voice as a news platform.

HBO Max is not home to many original news or interview programs, although it is the streaming home of HBO staples like “Real Time with Bill Maher” and “Axios.” But Wallace’s shift to the streaming service could be a preview of what the newly combined streamer under Warner Bros. Discovery will look like.

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