An exclusive excerpt from Tarlov’s upcoming book, ‘I Disagree,’ unpacks her thrilling and heart-wrenching year before she was tapped to co-host ‘The Five’
Credit: Roy Rochlin/Getty; Random House
In the months before Jessica Tarlov was named the liberal co-host of The Five, her life was flipped on its head in all the best, and worst, ways.
Over the span of several months in 2021, the neighbor she’d begun dating during the COVID-19 lockdown — who by that time had already followed her through two cross-country moves — became her fiancé, then husband, then the father of her first child. And smack in the middle of those back-to-back milestones, she said goodbye to the original man who taught her the power of embracing life’s curveballs.
In Tarlov’s new book, I Disagree: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends, due out on Tuesday, Sept. 15, the resident contrarian on television’s top-rated cable news show reflects on the lessons she’s learned about engaging in healthy political debate at a time of deep division. Along the way, Tarlov, 42, peels back the layers of her personal life, sharing how her hardest days — including processing her father’s death as a pregnant newlywed — helped her find her voice.
Read an exclusive excerpt from I Disagree below as Tarlov unpacks the highs and lows of her past few years and how they’ve informed her vulnerability on The Five.
Credit: Random House
Tarlov’s father learned he had tongue cancer in 2007, a particularly devastating diagnosis for a film producer who had pivoted careers to become a winemaker. The years-long battle came to a head during one of the most important chapters of her life.
I was never the type to dream about my wedding day growing up. I had no concept of what my dress would look like. If I’d have bridesmaids or not. If we’d be outside or inside. There would have to be great food and an open bar, but that was about it on the planning front. I was mostly consumed with finding the right guy, which I convinced myself I’d done more times than I’d like to admit.
Even without a vision board, I can assure you that the way my wedding day turned out to be so far out of the realm, I couldn’t have cooked it up even with a couple of drinks in me.
The good news: I found the right guy. My short, pink-lace dress with feathers was gorgeous. And I was twelve weeks pregnant, which was very exciting.
The bad news: It was the day I found out that my dad was going to die very soon.
Credit: Courtesy of Jessica Tarlov
While Tarlov was in full hair and makeup in frantic preparation for the wedding ceremony, her 69-year-old father was still stuck at Memorial Sloan Kettering, where he’d been getting treated for tongue cancer.
Brian and I thought we’d get married in a civil ceremony at San Francisco’s City Hall, just the two of us. It seemed like a fitting way to cap off an unconventional courtship during a once-in-a-generation global health pandemic. Nothing like telling people you haven’t spoken to in a while that you’d shacked up with your next-door neighbor during the pandemic, gotten pregnant, and married out west. At least they wouldn’t feel left off the guest list!
But once my dad told me that he’d like to see us get married, plans changed and we decided to hold the ceremony in a park just in front of my parents’ apartment with beautiful views of the Statue of Liberty. Afterward we’d have about twenty friends meet us and our families at a special neighborhood restaurant that I’d grown up going to. We were both very happy with the new plan. It still felt like “us,” just tweaked.
And then, the night before the ceremony, my dad didn’t feel well enough to meet with his friends who had flown in from L.A. to see him. That was sign number one that the wedding wouldn’t go as planned. Sign number two was even more extreme. At ten in the morning on our wedding day, with the ceremony scheduled in four hours, my mom told me that she had to take him to the hospital. I won’t get into the details, because he wouldn’t want me to overshare—though maybe that ship has already sailed!—but she said there was a good chance they’d be back in time.
Just what a bride wants to hear, right?
In fact, my mom made that “good chance” a reality. She’d been a valiant caregiver for my father throughout his illness, and at that moment she had to be a mom first. She had to make sure they were at my wedding.
Brian’s family had never even met my dad, and their first impression was a razor-thin man with a tracheal tube who couldn’t speak clearly enough to tell them how happy he was. Brian’s mom confided later that she was worried he might not survive the ceremony.
Our officiant, one of my dad’s best friends from law school and a former family court judge, did her thing as our families looked on. My mom gripped the handlebars of his wheelchair fiercely. My sister gave the kind of speech that put everything—the beauty of the moment and the tragedy of the moment—in full focus. She was launching me into my new life with a husband and also marking the dissolving of our own unit with the unspoken acknowledgment, but obvious fact, that our father wouldn’t be there for my first daughter’s birth.
Everyone cried. A lot.
The mix of happiness and sadness was one of the most intense feelings I’ve ever experienced. In fact, I’ve only felt it two other times in my life. At the births of both of my daughters.
What tremendous joy it is to have a child and how heartbreaking it is that my dad is missing all of this.
Credit: Courtesy of Jessica Tarlov
Tarlov met her husband, Brian, on the elevator of her building while both of them were returning home from disappointing dates in early 2020. The COVID lockdown fast-tracked their relationship, and within three months they had moved out west to be closer to her sister who was heavily pregnant. They soon returned to N.Y.C. to be near Tarlov’s father as his illness progressed.
It’s all still so vivid. That my dad had to spend six weeks in the ICU and lost part of his foot to sepsis. Going to the nursing home while he was recovering, worrying he’d contract Covid, and the relief we felt when he became one of the first to receive the Covid vaccine. Getting the news that Brian and I were pregnant and watching him beam brightly from behind the glasses you regularly see me in now.
So much else was happening, too. Juan Williams, the resident liberal voice on The Five, announced that he didn’t want to return to the studio and resigned from the show, which opened up a slot. I knew all the co-hosts pretty well. Dana had generously made me a staple on her show, and I regularly took the subway home with Jesse after we appeared together on Hannity. I’d also developed a budding relationship with Greg from being on his late-night show, Red Eye, years earlier, where I got to be a little less political, but no less feisty.
I was getting more comfortable in my own skin on the air. But my dad kept getting sicker that summer, and between his illness and my pregnancy, I had a lot going on at home. Pneumonia kept him in and out of the hospital until what little strength he had left was gone. I wasn’t there when he and my mom talked about whether he wanted to keep seeking treatment. … But there and then, they decided it was time. He wanted to die at home. My mom called Molly in Los Angeles and told her, “You should come back.”
We all took turns talking to him. Then, shortly before midnight, we crawled into bed with him. Brian, who’d only met my father a few times, made the choice to wait in the living room because he felt this was our time.
At 11:50 p.m., my mom, sister, and I were with him, just like we’d always been growing up. We each told him it was okay to go. And then he left us.
Credit: Courtesy of Jessica Tarlov
Before his death in July 2021, Tarlov’s father had expressed nerves about her guest appearances on The Five, making her mom pre-screen the show and watching it on DVR so that he could avoid any moments where she was skewered. When Tarlov was eight months pregnant with her first daughter, Fox News tapped her to become a regular co-host of the primetime program.
Though he loved what I did and was very proud, he could never get past the concern he felt that his little girl would get shouted down. But in the months before he died, he was excited about my work, and the way it helped me find my voice.
After he died, I remember talking on the air about a charity event that Jon Stewart and Pete Davidson were hosting to raise money for 9/11 first responders. I started to talk about my dad when I found myself choking up and started to cry. Will Cain, who was sitting to my left that day filling in for Jesse, put his hand on my shoulder in a sweet moment.
The word courage comes from the Latin cor, which means “heart.” And the decision to share my struggles publicly—whether on The Five, with my podcast, in this book, or just making a meaningful connection through conversation—really does come from my heart. Pain may isolate us. But purpose inspires connection.
Crying over my father’s death that day felt like an enormous release. Like I didn’t have to hide what I was going through from my colleagues—or the viewers. I don’t know if I was acting differently without knowing it. More sensitive or touchy. More tense, maybe. You know what it’s like when you’re on a roller coaster. Add pregnancy hormones to the mix and you’re a veritable tinderbox.
Credit: John Lamparski/Getty
Tarlov received positive feedback from Fox viewers about her vulnerability, realizing that adding a touch of humanity helped build a “connective tissue” between her and others who may not share her political views.
In some ways, it completed my journey from academic to advocate. When I talk about the importance of sharing that connective tissue with fellow Americans, people know that I mean it. Or that it’s crucial that we unify around American tragedies like 9/11. It’s a way to extract meaning from chaos, and to channel our hard-won wisdom into service for others walking similar paths.
That is the moment I feel like I’m in now. As the country veers into some very dark places, I am committed to doing what I can to repair our divides.
You don’t have to be in television or public speaking to have your own spheres of influence. The parent who speaks honestly about depression at a school meeting, the colleague who shares their experience with workplace discrimination, the friend who admits their struggles with addiction. We’re all engaged in the same work of transforming pain into purpose.
Excerpted from I DISAGREE: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends by Jessica Tarlov. Copyright © 2026 by 19 Jay LLC. Excerpted by permission of Random House, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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