Charissa Thompson opens up to Jalen Rose about overcoming painful incident

This week’s guest on “Renaissance Man” is someone I’ve grown up with in the biz, as they say. I’ve known Charissa Thompson since the early 2000s, when we were both on “The Best Damn Sports Show Period,” and it’s been a pleasure to see her grow into one of the premier sportscasters. She hosts “Fox NFL Kickoff,” and is a dynamo of a broadcaster, a human and a friend. One thing she is not: a phony.

I asked how she has been able to maintain her professionalism and be so damn good at her job. Instead of giving me fluffy career platitudes, she was incredibly candid about a painful episode in her life. She bravely talked about the 2018 incident when intimate photos of hers were leaked online and the fallout. “Being real, I haven’t had a sterling reputation … I had my privacy violated. I had something really bad happen to me,” she told me. “And those comments still to this day I have to delete off my Instagram.”