NEED TO KNOW
Eva Pilgrim was made for this.
Having grown up in a home where Inside Edition was always on TV, Pilgrim tells PEOPLE that she’s admittedly still “slightly floored” that she gets to be the new anchor of the beloved newsmagazine. She’ll be the program’s fourth-ever host, succeeding Deborah Norville, who wrapped her tenure on the show in May.
“I look back at my first job, and my mom was still sending me money to eat because she was worried I wasn’t eating. I think about the countless people who’ve poured into me and helped me get better at this to then get to this point,” says Pilgrim, who shares 3-year-old daughter Ella with her husband Ed Hartigan.
“My mother, when I told her I was interviewing for this job, lost her mind. I watched Inside Edition growing up. It was on in our house, but also in my first TV job, it was a show that came on between newscasts,” Pilgrim adds of the serendipity of her new gig.
Eva Pilgrim
Still, the former GMA3: What You Need to Know anchor admits that she certainly feels “the weight” of stepping into a new role at an institution of a show like Inside Edition. “It’s a legacy,” she says, adding that doing the show after Norville is no small task, either.
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
“You feel overwhelmed,” she says. “To be in this job now at a point where I really appreciate everything that it is? I can’t believe the job [was] open! Deborah was really nice and sent me an email, and at the end of the email she was floored that she had been in the job for as long as she had. She said that was because it was just such a great job, so why would you leave? It’s one of those jobs that people don’t leave because it’s great.”
Holly Haffner
Pilgrim was born into a military family in Seoul, South Korea. Her mother is Korean, and her father hails from South Carolina. She grew up as a self-proclaimed Army brat.
“We moved all over the place, literally four times in first grade, I always tell everyone that,” Pilgrim says with a laugh. “But what’s nice about that is I feel like traveling a lot is good training for a journalist because you learn how to make friends, you feel uncomfortable when you meet people you’ve never met before, and you know that that’s going to happen every time. It conditions you to just say the first thing and make the first move to have a conversation.”
The innate curiosity and interpersonal skills Pilgrim developed early would continue to serve her well — by the time she was in high school, the family had settled back in South Carolina.
“We grew up eating kimchi and country-fried steak and collard greens. It was a weird collision of cultural differences that ended up all one thing,” she says. “And I think the luxury of having a parent who’s not from where you grow up — a different country — very different than South Carolina, you realize how small the world is because you’re traveling back and forth between those two different families.
Eva Pilgrim
Pilgrim decided to pursue journalism while in college after taking classes in the subject and working for a local TV station while she was still in school.
“I liked the access that it gave me. Whether you were covering a sporting event or a community event, you got to be there in the middle of it. That I found to be kind of addictive,” she says.
After working on a story where her subject confessed to a crime mid-interview and was subsequently arrested thanks in part to her reporting, Pilgrim knew she’d found the line of work she was meant to be doing all along.
“[That man] said all the things to me that day because I was in many ways naive, but I was curious and very human with him. I wasn’t asking him probing or prying questions. I was letting him talk and giving him human responses,” Pilgrim explains, “and our news director at the time, she said something to me that I’ve never forgotten and I try to hold on to no matter how many interviews that I do. ‘Always lead with your humanity,’ she said, ‘that’s why you are good at this.'”
Tune in to Inside Edition on Aug. 18 for Eva’s first broadcast ahead of the season 38 premiere on Sept. 8. Check local listings for times and stations in your area at www.insideedition.com.
