How 'The View' helps Sunny Hostin learn the 'Truth About Murder'

Bill Keveney
'The View' co-host Sunny Hostin talks about her new Investigation Discovery series, 'Truth About Murder with Sunny Hostin,' at the Television Critics Association summer press tour Thursday.
'The View' co-host Sunny Hostin talks about her new Investigation Discovery series, 'Truth About Murder with Sunny Hostin,' at the Television Critics Association summer press tour Thursday.

BEVERLY HILLS – Sunny Hostin's latest project, Investigation Discovery's "Truth About Murder," is very different from what she does as co-host of "The View," but the ABC daytime show's platform has helped her connect with series subjects who' ve been affected by murder.

"It's been such a benefit," Hostin told USA TODAY Thursday after a panel about the show at the Television Critics Association summer press tour. "Because I'm in 3 million homes a day, because I think they perceive me as someone that's honest and trustworthy and keeps it even, they trust me. It's been helpful in interviewing many of these people because they know I'm going to be honest."

The six-episode "Truth," which premieres Oct. 22, also relies on Hostin's legal knowledge from her earlier career as a prosecutor and her own experience with crime as a witness to her uncle's stabbing when she was a child.

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"I mentioned to my dad recently that that experience colored my life," said Hostin, whose uncle survived the stabbing but died a few years later from complications. The man who stabbed her uncle "was not arrested, not charged and there was no justice. It's one of the reasons I decided to become a prosecutor."

Hostin, who also serves as a senior legal correspondent for ABC News, said one of her goals as a prosecutor and in the new series, which explores controversial homicides and the people affected by them, is to "give voice to the voiceless."

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"I try to approach every single story as a journalist and a former prosecutor and (also) as a person who has been victimized," said Hostin, who was with her uncle and tried to protect him when he was stabbed.

Unlike the morning chatfest, the new show reminds me much more of the work that I did as a prosecutor. It's very victim-centric," she said. "What I'm happy about is that it shows that side of me which I don't necessarily get to show (on 'The View')."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'The View' co-host Sunny Hostin examines murders in ID series