Jessica Tarlov is staying at Fox News after signing a new three-year contract with the network, keeping the liberal commentator in her prominent role on “The Five.”
Tarlov confirmed the new deal while discussing her career and relationships with her conservative co-hosts in a recent interview with Marie Claire. TV Insider separately reported that the agreement will keep her at Fox for another three years.
“It’s always a great affirmation of your seat at the table,” Tarlov said of receiving the contract.
She added that regardless of how contentious her television appearances can appear to viewers, the agreement shows the network continues to view her as “a valued element in this discourse.”
Tarlov joined Fox News as a contributor in 2017 and currently rotates in the liberal seat on “The Five,” which airs weekdays at 5 p.m. Eastern. She also provides political analysis across Fox News and Fox Business programming.
Her role routinely puts her opposite Jesse Watters, Greg Gutfeld, Dana Perino and Emily Compagno, who recently became a permanent co-host following Jeanine Pirro’s departure from the program.
Fox announced in August that Compagno would join “The Five” full time beginning Sept. 8, while Tarlov and Harold Ford Jr. would continue rotating in the show’s liberal seat.
Tarlov said the structure of the program often gives her about 90 seconds to deliver an argument, forcing her to make her position quickly while facing several co-hosts who frequently disagree with her.
“If I’m going to get 90 seconds, I want to make the most of it,” she said.
She explained that she sometimes begins a disagreement with humor or a backhanded compliment, describing the approach as an “olive branch” that can lower the temperature before she makes her case.
Despite the frequently combative exchanges viewers see on television, Tarlov said her relationships with the other panelists are considerably friendlier away from the cameras.
“Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld actually care about me as a person,” she said, while noting that those relationships do not stop them from strongly disagreeing politically.
Tarlov said she and Gutfeld regularly communicate outside work and that she attended his daughter’s first birthday party. She has also spent time socially with other members of the program, including Perino and Compagno.
She said maintaining those friendships depends on separating personal relationships from political disagreements and understanding her colleagues as people rather than reducing them to their ideological positions.
Marie Claire’s profile similarly described Tarlov as maintaining close relationships with colleagues despite regular clashes on air, per Trending Politics.
Tarlov also discussed some of the more emotional moments she has experienced during her years at Fox, including speaking publicly about her late father.
Her father, film producer and winemaker Mark Tarlov, died in 2021 following a lengthy battle with tongue cancer. Tarlov has said his illness was linked to exposure following the Sept. 11 attacks.
She recalled becoming emotional while discussing him on “The Five,” saying her colleagues temporarily backed away from their usual combative format as she struggled through the segment.
“There was great relief and also discomfort,” Tarlov said of finally speaking publicly about the grief she had been carrying.
The renewed contract comes as Tarlov prepares to release her book, “I Disagree: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends,” which focuses in part on political disagreement, personal relationships and her experience working as an ideological minority on Fox’s highly rated panel show.
Fox describes “The Five” as one of the network’s signature programs, and the show has repeatedly ranked among the most-watched programs in cable news. The network said in August that it remained the No. 1 program across cable television.
Tarlov’s new three-year deal makes clear that Fox intends to keep one of the program’s most recognizable ideological counterweights at the table despite — and in many ways because of — the heated exchanges that have become a regular feature of the show.
