Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Ronan Farrow, Woody Allen’s ‘Son,’ Scores New MSNBC Talk Show

Ronan Farrow, the 25-year-old son of actress Mia Farrow, will host a one-hour weekday show starting early next year on MSNBC, the U.S. television channel said on Wednesday.

The writer and human rights lawyer, who has been in talks with MSNBC about the show for months, will also contribute to the channel’s website and NBC News.

“Ronan has established himself as a provocative, independent journalist capable of challenging people’s assumptions and empowering audiences,” Phil Griffin, MSNBC’s president, said in a statement.

“His show will be a game changer for MSNBC, representing a fresh approach to how we deliver news.”

Farrow, a Yale Law School graduate and Rhodes Scholar, said the show would be geared for a more engaged generation of viewers and what they can do to be part of the story.

“I’m excited to shake up people’s expectations for cable news. And to get a ton of Twitter followers,” he said.

Farrow worked as a foreign policy official in the first Obama administration and served as a U.S. diplomat with a focus on the conflict of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

He was thought to be the biological son of Oscar-winning director Woody Allen. But his mother cast doubt on his paternity when she said earlier this month in an interview that her former husband, singer-actor Frank Sinatra, could “possibly” be his father.

Sinatra, who died in 1998 at age 82, and Mia Farrow, 68, were married from 1966 to 1968. But the actress said the relationship continued after their divorce.

In a tweet posted after the news was reported, Farrow said, “Listen, we’re all ‘possibly’ Frank Sinatra’s son.”

His mother and Allen parted in 1992 after the director’s relationship with Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter, Soon-Yi, was revealed.

Farrow, named Satchel Ronan O’Sullivan Farrow at birth, and two of his siblings were the subjects of a custody suit between Allen, 77, and his mother, which the actress won.

Earlier this month, “30 Rock” actor Alec Baldwin’s late- night current events and culture talk show premiered on MSNBC, with New York Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio as his first guest.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.