Renee Nelson on life after Fox 10 in Phoenix: 'I definitely don't feel like I'm done'

Renee Nelson, the former Fox 10 anchor who parted ways with the station in August of 2023, is sleeping better, spending more time with her kids and even taking up mountain biking.

But she’s not done with TV.

“It’s funny, because people ask me (what it’s like) for me to not be on TV and not be relevant,” Nelson said in an interview, her first time speaking out aside from some social media posts. “And I’m like, I never thought of myself as relevant. … That’s kind of not really fitting of my personality anyway. I’ve been happy to be off for five minutes and off the radar. But people still care — that means a lot.”

'The last few years have been difficult for me'

And people do care — TV news personalities occupy an outsized stature in the community, so much so that their comings and goings stir up interest; even a vacation can be cause for alarm among viewers. And Nelson’s relative public silence since August has led to even more curiosity. It’s curiosity she can’t really satisfy beyond a social media post in which she said she was unaware that she would be leaving.

“The last few years have been difficult for me," Nelson says in the post. "The news can be painful and exceptionally painful to report on stories that mirror your ongoing personal experience. There were days when viewers could see that I was struggling with the content and would reach out. There were days when Fox staff could tell I was struggling.”

Nelson said she can’t say much beyond that. “I am prohibited at this point from giving any details about my experience at Fox,” she said, adding that she has legal representation from a New York law firm, and that her social-media post had been cleared.

“I guess what people weren’t privy to was that I had a personal struggle going on that started over the pandemic,” she said. “I was struggling with changes in familial status, like a lot of people did over that time. I probably didn’t have the support that I needed, and I think that’s really common for women in my position. There’s stats on the economic toll that certain domestic issues have on women. That was tough, and I wasn’t always good at it. I didn’t always handle it well.”

Nelson worked in the Fox 10 studio during the pandemic

The struggle, she said, involved balancing her personal and professional life.

“To put a finer point on it, there were days as a journalist I was reporting on police brutality during the show,” Nelson said, “and then I'd find myself walking across the street between shows to the police department to request assistance personally. And that doesn't feel good. And when you're a journalist, at least for me … I felt like I was good at the transparency and the authenticity, and the lack of being able to be authentic and transparent in the type of stories that I was reporting and how they impacted me personally — which is completely inappropriate for me to inject anything that personally impacted me — it didn't feel good.”

Nelson worked through the pandemic, reporting from the Fox 10 studio rather than remotely. “I didn’t work from home for an hour,” she said. “There were days when I would go from the studio back home, which was 45-50 minutes away, and I’d look like a hazmat worker and I’d go outside and play football with my boys, just play catch and try not to cross-contaminate, because they weren’t going anywhere. That went on for months, and that was really hard. But I took it very seriously.”

The pandemic had a big impact on TV news; a lot of anchors and reporters left, saying it had caused them to rethink their priorities.

“It probably had the opposite effect on me,” Nelson said. “I guess it made me feel like wow, there’s a deeper purpose here for people that are at home and don’t have all the resources and information that I do.” She took some certification courses to better understand COVID-19 and its effects.

“I really felt like a lifeline for a lot of people at the time,” she said, “and a conduit of really important information.”

Nelson wants to make a TV comeback eventually

Nelson has been working with BLOOM365, among other groups, an organization that helps educate young people and young adults about healthy relationships, and supports those who have experienced or witnessed domestic violence, sexual assault or other forms of abuse.

And she has gotten some sleep.

“I spent 10 years doing morning shows, and sleep deprivation is real. It changes you. And my kids are like, ‘Wow, you’re so calm and just chill,’ and not being forced to go to bed at a certain time and wake up at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. is a big difference.”

Still, Nelson wants to get back to TV news at some point — even if she’s enjoying her life at the moment.

“Right now I'm really enjoying that, and I have some other priorities right now, but I would like to get back,” she said. “I don't know exactly what that looks like. But I definitely don't feel like I'm done.”

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Ex-anchor Renee Nelson talks life after Fox 10: 'News can be painful'