Malika Andrews On Money and Representation in the WNBA | Nice Talk | Marie Claire

This episode of Nice Talk is sponsored by Nexus. And since we love talking about power on Nice Talk, it feels fitting to say power isn't always loud. Sometimes it's the quiet confidence of walking into a room and knowing you're ready. At Nexus, beauty isn't just about how you look, it's about how you show up. Their approach to haircare is rooted in protein science, engineered to help repair damage and resist what's next so your hair can rise to the occasion right along with you. For women who see beauty as a part of the uniform, not just for how it looks, but for what it helps you do, Nexus makes products that work hard, last long, and support the way you show up day after day. Nexus, long live hair. I was dressing like I took Nana's curtains, cut them off and wrapped them around me. I was like, I will be taken seriously if it is the last thing I do. I am 25, but you will be thinking I am a man. Malika Andrews, welcome to Nice Talk. Thank you so much for having me. I'm obviously so excited to have you here to talk about money and style and power, but first I wanna give our audience a quick rundown of your amazing accomplishments for those who may not know. So as the host of ESPN's NBA Today, NBA Countdown, and WNBA Countdown, Malika is one of the most prominent names in sports journalism. In 2022, she won a Sports Emmy Award for Outstanding Personality, Emerging On-Air Talent, and that year was also the first woman to host the NBA Draft. That's so major. An event that you have hosted every year since. And this January, Malika's also added tennis to the broadcast roster, covering major slams for ESPN. Malika, are you ready to jump in? I am ready, Nikki, let's do it. Okay, so taking things back a bit in time, I wanna know about your relationship with what we like to call the big three here, which is money, style, and power. Can I separate the big three and make them? Yeah, let's do it, yeah. Because my relationship has changed with each one of them and has been different, I think, over the course of my life. Money was never something that my family shied away from, and I didn't realize early on, just discussions about money and budgets, and in a lot of ways, lack of money sometimes. I remember my mom balancing a checkbook and doing that at the kitchen table in front of my sister and I when we were really young. I distinctly remember money being something that we talked about as something that you need and something that no matter how much that you have, it's always gonna feel like maybe it's not enough, and don't allow yourself to fall into that trap. And I remember when I was 10, and my mom and I did a little modeling gig for a friend of ours, and they paid each of us $100, and I put my $100 in a little Bumblebee wallet, and I thought that I was rich, girl. I thought that that money was gonna take me from my 10-year-old self all the way into my adulthood in some ways, right? I remember asking my mom a couple weeks later, mom, what are we gonna spend that $100 on? What are we gonna do with our big money? And she said to me, oh, Malika, that was half of our groceries for our family of four for this month. And it blew my mind to think about what I thought of as so much, and the reality of how far money can stretch. And I appreciate the transparency that my mother had with me, because I think that as a woman being able to talk about money, it's part of harnessing your number three, power, right? And style for me was a way that I stepped into power. My aunt is one of the most powerful women that I know, and she's also one of the most stylish women that I know, my aunt Sagra. And she has this fabulous, she's a banker, she's Spanish. Yeah, Sagra is Spanish, and she lives in London. And she has this wonderful Carrie Bradshaw-esque closet. And when I was a kid, nothing was off limits. She took the boundaries away and let me go clomp around and play in her crazy, beautiful Manola blocks. I felt so powerful when I got to play dress-up. And now I think that when I am stepping into power, having conversations about money, it's dressing the part for me. And I think that that has been, Sagra was my very first style icon. And I don't think I connected until later. I felt powerful when I was in her shoes. Ooh, yeah, I love that. I wanna talk a little bit about your high school experience, because you have spoken a bit in the media about attending a therapeutic boarding school. I did. Did you feel isolated or different than people your age? How did it impact your perception of power and power dynamics? I think that feeling different, especially when you are a young person, can be an isolating experience. When people asked me when I went to college, well, how did that affect you? What was it like to be in a graduating class of eight or only having experienced high school through this lens? It's the only lens that I ever had, right? And so not having these points of relatability with my peers, prom night, or being able to have a cell phone. I didn't have one in high school, right? They take away, you don't have electronics, you don't have social media. I left before iPhones and came back and my little sister had to teach me what Instagram was. Stop, wow. So for me, I think that it was, anytime you feel different and feel othered, you have a choice to make. You can choose to allow other people to fill in your blank space and tell your story or, and this sounds very simple, but you can choose to be the voice and fill that. But it took me a long time to be able to do that. For a long time, high school was a very sore spot for me because I wasn't, as black women, looking for other ways to be different. I wasn't looking for other ways to be othered. I was looking for ways to be able to find what is being human. It's finding human connection. You want to have sameness and celebrate the ways in which we all can relate to each other. And I feel like when I didn't have a lot of life experience, right, you're 18 years old, this huge chunk of four or five years, mine was signaling to the world that I wasn't like you. I see the world through a lens that could only have been shaped and formed through going away to therapeutic boarding school, going to wilderness therapy, being in a mental hospital. Like I could only have come to know myself and I think know other people through that walk. But at the time, I was just wondering why I wasn't, I was on this path snowshoeing while everyone else was skipping down the yellow brick road. So what was it like for you when you got to college? Oh girl, it was so weird. Because when I went to college, what I was looking for was a place to be and belong. I think that it took me a second to figure that out because I went from a class size of six kids in a trailer in Utah to real lecture halls. And I think I always also, I love listening to people. I love to learn. And I think a part of me wondered if I'd gone to normal school in quotes, could I have pushed myself and my education and would I have ended up at the University of Portland in the same way that I did? And I'm glad that I did. But for a while, my education, I wanted to be able to say like my mom who went to UCLA and then did a teaching course at Harvard. And I think that for me, I always wondered what I could be a little bit. So I had to find my way. You joined the school newspaper and it was through journalism. And that's where the belonging came in. Yeah, right, exactly. And so it was through journalism and landing on a sports beat that you developed a love of sports reporting, right? Why journalism? Why the school newspaper? Talk to me about that journey a little bit. For me, it was writing, right? I made sense of the, when all these things that I'm sort of speeding through at a very 30,000 foot level, I made sense of the world by stopping, opening pages, writing it down, editing my story, playing with phrases and coming to a common language. And I felt that I could bring my otherness to a place of likeness. That's how I made sense of the world. And so I always knew that I wasn't going to be math, but it was going to be that. That's how I was. It wasn't going to be math for me either. By the way, that broke my heart because remember Aunt Sagra? Yeah. Aunt Sagra was a wiz at math. Okay. And I wanted to be Aunt Sagra when I grew up. So I was trying to find what it was for me and writing I knew was going to be it. And when I joined the paper, the only opening they had was in sports. My dad's a personal trainer. I grew up loving sports. And so I'm the person who says I want to try something. And when I try, I have a Yoda to me. There is no try, there is only do. And I'll take it even one step farther. There's not only do, there's only excel. Yes. I was ready to no longer be seen as the broken kid who got sent away. I wanted to be successful. And I think that reframe is so powerful. Deciding that you want to be good at something and to step into effort and work is a really powerful thing that I think that every young person in college, you get to that moment where you decide, I'm ready for hard and I'm ready. I know that everything, there's a phrase that I love, everything he wants on the other side of hard. I'm ready to go and to put in that work. And that for me was like the shining, literally it's called the beacon is what it represented for me. Oh, that's incredible. So talk to me about sort of the discovering, like the love of the intersection of journalism and sports. Did it come immediately where you did? It did. Sports has everything, right? It has entertainment. It has triumph. It has defeat. It has protagonists and antagonists and those two switching roles and money struggles and power struggles. And it's an allegory and it's a mirror for the world. That is sport. I did still feel that in a world that rewarded seriousness, sometimes sports were relegated to the little brother or little sister of the newsroom. And I wanted to be taken seriously. So I immediately fell in love with sports. And there was a small piece of me internalizing. I'm sure, haven't you, you walk around and you hear fashion is wonderful. Oh, of course. But fashion is the, that's the candy floss before you get to the real world news. But fashion and sports, like these are real businesses. Yeah, exactly. And so I do think it was getting through that. But yes, I fell in love with it immediately. Did you immediately fall in love with fashion? I always liked fashion. I always liked getting dressed, that sort of thing. But when I realized the storytelling and what you can learn about people through fashion, whether they like it, whether they opt out of it, whether they say they like it, but they're apprehensive of it, what they like to wear, those sorts of things. It's more of like the psychology of fashion. And I imagine for you, like the psychology of sports and all of that together. The psychology of sports, yeah. And writing is a medium where you get to be, you get to both have and be a first draft. So if you are a person and you are in the first draft stage of your life, writing is a very, it was a formative place for me to be. Because I got to take my thoughts to the page and walk away from them. Come back to them and edit them and ask a friend about them and read someone else's words and be inspired by this turn of phrase. And edit that and then bring that to the world. And I think in a world where so often, now I work in television. Television is the first draft at times on TV. And you feel eyeballs and the feedback of that. To have the luxury of being able to not be your first draft in the eyes of the world, I think was something that I needed coming out of boarding school. That's so wise. That's what I try to be around here. It's just a wise one. I wanna talk to you about, you got your fellowship at New York Times and then you moved to Chicago Tribune. So this is the writing part of your early story and you were covering the NBA and the Midwest. What are you learning from those New York Times, those Chicago Tribune days, working at those newspapers that you're still using today? I try to really listen to people. And the New York Times, every day I was walking into a collection of best in the world. And you walk through Pilitzer Hall of the New York Times building and I would eat my lunch up there sometimes. And sitting in that history and feeling so very small and wanting to be able to put your own mark on a really big, really storied institution. I wanted to make my mark. And the New York Times told me that I wasn't ready to make a mark yet. I needed to go get more experience elsewhere. And I think that that was really a powerful lesson for me because it was my first real no in journalism. Interesting. It's the first time I really wanted something and so close to getting it. And then was told, not this isn't for you, but you need to go get some more experience. And we've all heard that at some point. But I was afraid of redirection because I'm a planner and I am a, this step we need to, I write down my goals. I write down my plans at New Year's 2026. And so when somebody else takes the wheel and says, no, you're going to take this turn. I need my GPS. I don't drive around LA without it. And so I do think it was valuable for me to learn the art of storytelling carries you anywhere. Writing is always going to serve you. And if you listen, there are always stories to be told. But I was so focused on here that I was afraid when they pushed me out the door and said, go try something else, not knowing that it was going to make for a more powerful yes later. I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about your move to being on TV. So in 2018, you moved over to ESPN becoming one of the youngest sideline reporters ever at that time. I came to sideline reporting in such a, I hope once in a lifetime way, which is the pandemic. And we had an operation at the NBA restart when the NBA decided to play its season. And the operations were only 20 people for ESPN, which we have 250 people just on the upside at the NBA finals. So 20 is tiny. So I was asked to wear all these hats that I wouldn't have gotten the opportunity to otherwise. I wouldn't. Luck favors the prepared. And I got very lucky. That is so true. I got very lucky. I was ready. Yeah. I didn't know that I was ready. And how often does that happen where someone else has to give you a little push and a sprinkle of confidence. But I was there. I was ready. And I got lucky. And I got lucky at a time where there was so much unluckiness and unhappiness and a horror in the world. And I was getting to take a foray into some of my dream jobs. And so that was something that you grapple with at the time. You're literally in a bubble on the inside being sheltered from this plague and this sadness that the world is facing. That's how I got to be a sideline reporter. Now, when I got that opportunity, I was lucky enough to be surrounded by bosses who... There's a difference between having a mentor and having a sponsor and an advocate, right? We talk about this all the time in NAPJ. Yeah, yeah, of course. Mentors, sponsors, advocates, the people who talk about you in rooms you're not in. And I was the Amy Poehler I got talked well about behind my back and got to have the same people push for me to keep that opportunity. And I got to run with it. So that is how I became the youngest sideline reporter. Were you nervous, though, about the age or anything of the sort? Like, were you like, I'm, you know, no one is ever like, I'm so young, I'm doing this. When I was doing that, I was dressing like I took Nana's curtains, cut them off and wrapped them around me. I was like, I will be taken seriously if it is the last thing I do. I am 25, but you will be thinking I am a ma'am. I was so nervous. I didn't want... First of all, I think that women are told that we need to justify the reason that we are in a room instead of walking in, knowing that our qualifications will speak for themselves. I inherently care entirely too much what people think about me. I'm working on that. And it's caused me at different times to be a person I really didn't like. I've had to say some sorries that I'm embarrassed that I had to say. But yeah, I felt like I was acting. I was trying on a role that I needed to convince people that I was old enough and mature enough and wise enough to have. Which seems so silly now, but at the time, heck yeah, I was nervous. Yeah. Did the reporting though come, like the sideline reporting, did that come naturally to you? Were you like, I'm ready to be on camera. I know how to do this. Yes. And I was also nervous. I was so sweaty on my first hit. I was nervous to admit that being on television was something that I aspired to do. Tell me more about that. I had internalized a understanding of myself as being smart because I was a writer. And that was the way that I was comfortable. I was comfortable being, telling myself the story that I was a worthy person because I'm smart. And people know that because look at these. Because I write the words. Look at these written words. And I was so afraid of admitting that I wanted to walk into a visual medium as a woman. Because some may look at that as like vain or I don't know, frivolous or whatever it may be. I'd allowed myself to have some of that be something that I told myself. Meanwhile, it's like one of the hardest things you could possibly do. Oh my gosh. By the way, these women who have been on the sidelines for years and years. And that's by the way, what ultimately shadowing and learning from the sideline reporters that I really deeply admired and the hosts. And it is so challenging and so difficult. And the level of preparation that you have to have, knowing that you're not gonna get into the game as much as play-by-play or color analysts, nor should you, but you need to be just as prepared. Learning from the Doris Birks and the Cassidy Hubberts of the world, it helped me see a different truth. In that these are the hardest working women in the business. And it's a sorority that I would lucky to even be considered to be a part of. You've been the first or the youngest like so many times in your career, but I can't help but think about, or I wanna talk to you about, is there pressure that comes with that? Do you feel pressure that comes with that? Tell me about it. Of course. Being the first means you don't wanna be the last. And we have still a prove-it society of oftentimes when you are the first person to do something, especially when you are the first woman, let alone the first black woman, you are looking to give people a reason for this to continue. I absolutely felt that pressure, especially with the draft. I take on those assignments, not from a place of pressure, but a place of joy. I was talking to someone recently about, I've been hosting MBA Today for five years now, which is such a blessing. I don't necessarily get butterflies for walking into that show anymore because it's what I do every day. And there is a ease and a comfort that I feel. I'm chasing butterflies now. I look for the draft or tennis or adding these new assignments that give me the feeling of being nervous and alive and like there's stakes. And it's why players wanna play on the biggest stages. Being able to be in a place of enough comfort to then step outside of it, that is my ultimate, what I couldn't have imagined more for my career. Yeah. At MC, we call that an ambitious woman. And we love ambitious women. My kind of gal. So I heard you talk in an interview about how women often get asked about work-life balance, which we talk about at MC often, but that doesn't exist. And that is, it's real. The juggling. Instead, you prefer the term work-life recipe, which I think is fabulous. Tell us a little bit about that. I know that I can't be a perfect wife and perfect sister and perfect daughter and perfect MBA host and perfect sideline reporter. I think that every day you are building a recipe and it's cooking, not baking, because it is a art, not a science. It's not exact. Exactly. You are not measuring out that teaspoon and leveling out the top. Work-life recipe to me is this analogy that I heard where you are always juggling and you're juggling balls that are glass and you're juggling balls that are plastic. And on any given day, you can drop a plastic ball and it's not going to shatter. You drop a glass ball and you're going to be in trouble. Some days it's okay that work is glass. It is okay that you are delaying your family dinner, your drop-off, you will be a better wife, a better mother, a better... If you prioritize what you need in that moment and it's okay to not apologize for that glass ball being work. It's what has helped me make my career what it is. On the flip side, it also means working to not apologize when you need, when family is that glass for you or whatever the case may be. So for me, the balance will never exist. The recipe can change every day and you are baking, not cooking. Play with a little. Sometimes you need a little bit more cayenne, sometimes a little more seasoning. And some days, you know what? Your tummy's a little achy. It needs to be a little bit less of all. Yeah, it needs to be a little bland. Always seasoned, but a little less. Okay, so you're still extremely young and you've... Thank you. Exactly. I think also the thing is for so long I was told, you're the youngest person to do this. You're the youngest to do that. You're the first to... I remember asking Dave, my husband one time, will I still be good enough when I'm not just good because I'm young? I think he probably said, yeah. Exactly, he's like enough. He's like, I don't have time for this. And I was like, no, this is we need to talk. This is existential. But I appreciate you saying that because stepping into a... I was down in the Australian Open and I had a birthday when I was down there. And John McEnroe, he asked me how old I am. And he said, what are you like? What are you, 21? I was like, no, I'm actually 31. He goes, oh, that's a real age. And I was like, no one's ever told me that before. You're like, got it, okay. I'm finally at the real age. Yeah, I was just playing. Exactly, I was playing back then. So that cracked me up though because I do think for so long I've had that qualifier that I did start to let the green monster of doubt creep in. What happens when I'm not just the youngest? Am I still good enough? And so now I get to play in the space of being, as you say, still young. And I've grown up in this industry. I've grown up in front of people that now know me as an 18-year-old and a 22-year-old. And I'm walking in the same halls I did when I was 26. And when you've been that person, sometimes it's hard for folks to see who you are in front of them that day and shed some of the past versions of you. So I appreciate you saying that. Yeah, I'm curious what advice you would give to the past versions of you, the 18-year-old, the 22-year-old, the 26-year-old. What would you tell her? Comparison is the thief of joy. You're gonna get there. Put on that Billy Joel song. Slow down, you crazy child. You're so ambitious for a juvenile. You have time. I was always worried. And I think if I still at times, the flip side of ambition is fear that you're never going to get there. You have all of this ambition and you want to chase it. Ambition needs to be tempered by appreciation. You have to be just as ambitious as you are grateful. And early on in my career, I was so focused on getting there that I didn't enjoy where I was. And I had to remind myself that past versions, when I start to look at the next thing, what's your five-year plan? What do you want to do next? I couldn't have dreamed of a more blessed, big, beautiful opportunity than what I have. And I don't want to miss it. And if you are talking to your younger self about showing up on camera specifically, what's something you wish you knew earlier about showing up on camera, whether it's confidence or pressure, like even hair or beauty? Wear the outfit. I love it. I didn't always wear the outfit. And what's the outfit for you? The outfit for me is evolved. A power suit with an excellent heel is where I started to find my power. I needed the suit to bring the power, I guess. But then now I love a bold color. I love a skirt. I was afraid to show too much personal style, distract from the story, become the story. I wear the outfit. Yeah. I feel like so many people are afraid, well, especially women or Black women of color are very cognizant of their hair. Let's say that. Oh, yes. It's been a journey for me. Do you have that? Did you have that? I cried when I first got my haircut this way. My hair was broken and I looked like a little boy and I wasn't sure I looked like, quote unquote, looked like a little boy. I don't know. It was the whole thing of like, if I don't have my long braids, like who am I without all of this hair? Meanwhile, I got rid of the hair. I got a new man. I got a new job. Hey. Things started taking off. I'm like, no, I needed the haircut, actually. Yeah. Like you needed to step in. You needed to trim some things. Exactly. What has your hair journey been like? I have my hairstylist, Sophie. I call her my hair fairy godmother. But I came to ESPN doing everything myself. And I think a shared experience of so many Black women is being afraid to sit into a chair for the first time and be told that your hair is too much because that then pulls on this thread of being too much. And so I always came to places done because I didn't want to be a burden on other people. That's so crazy. When you like bring your makeup bag with you, meanwhile, like the- For the NBA finals, when I did the trophy ceremony, I did my hair and makeup myself just because I didn't know that I could ask. ESPN is so wonderful about my hair and my makeup now. But I came from a place of writing and didn't know that I could ask. Yes. So I didn't ask. Yeah. I really wanted to wear my curls out on air. And it takes time. Yeah. It takes time to do it every day. And I'm someone who has to do a pretty good refresh every time and defuse. And that takes time that a 35-minute hair and makeup slot doesn't have. So reframing that, I think, was important for me. But I just went through this recently where I've worn my curls for years and years and I wanted to try a blowout. I wondered if I was betraying a younger version of myself by feeling beautiful with straight hair. And is that complicated? And what does that mean? And I had to kind of go through that conversation with myself. And now I'm wearing braids. And my goodness, is it easy. Oh. Oh my gosh, it's so easy. I feel very true to myself right now because why I was interested in the blowout is because, girl, it's easy. Yes. You blow your hair out. You wrap it up in your silk scarf at night. You do a couple of touch-ups the next day. I didn't need to do a six-step routine that happens with my curls. And I have, in air quotes, good curls, right? Like I have easy curls. And so this feels like the kind of the perfect balance of I really, curls are me. And so I wanted my curls out. But I needed that five-minute beat that I was not getting with those. So we're going to rock this for a little bit. It looks good. You can tell that it feels good on you. You're on camera like six hours some days. Wild, right? Yeah. How do you approach getting dressed for that? Like what are the elements, either color, silhouette, fabric that you like always want to wear? First of all, not alone. And I don't mean like I don't get dressed by myself. I mean, I do have help. And so I do think that's important to say that I have a Leon and a Leon. Leon Gray has immaculate taste and is an extension of myself. Good tailoring and a very high shoe that elongates my legs and makes me feel like I can step in front of the camera and say, this is my full self and my full body because there's no part of me on MBA Today that is looking to hide. I'm not looking to hide what I look like. I'm not looking to hide my opinions or more my reporting. There's a difference between when you feel like, okay, I know you feel great. Of course. Especially when you have to go on air and you never want to feel like you're tugging at something or something's like kind of off. Like you don't want to think about your clothing. Like you want to know that you look good and you feel good. And so then you can get on with like what you have to do. I wear jeans on air. Yeah. I think that- Because TV has like a very specific, or had or has, I don't know. I would love to hear your thoughts. Like very specific sort of like- I think one of the biggest comments I've gotten about my style is that I don't dress like a television anchor. And I think that there are wonderful television anchor outfits. And I think that we've evolved to a more individualized place beyond the one color monochrome. If you want to wear that and that's what you feel best in, it's what you absolutely should wear. But if what you feel best in, and this is why Western Conference Finals last year, I did an entire jean series. Everything I wore was jean suits because I wanted to show that jeans could also be tailored and professional and something that people want to then style their own. That's the biggest compliment. And if I walk around and someone says, I thought that I could wear this because I'm like, you didn't need my permission, but go ahead with your bad self. So yeah, I do think TV style has changed. And I think that sports is a different realm of style. I dress differently for the WNBA. I wear all women brands when I cover the WNBA. Then I do tennis. We sort of have a lookbook for each tennis major. It was color blocking for the Australian Open because it's summer, it's fun. It's the first major of the season. It's the happy slam. And we wanted big, bold, bright, happy colors. Wimbledon is classic and traditional and polka dots and stripes. And so we have an entire lookbook for Wimbledon. And then the US Open is inherently American. Three distinct styles for that. Only women for the W. During the draft, we try to distinctly, the first year the story was, I was the first woman to host it. All female brands were a DVF suit. Jewelry that was all women. I try to have my style be storytelling, even if only me and Leon are the ones who know the meaning until someone asks. But people notice those things. I think that's very valuable. Are you on Pinterest? Are you lookbooking? Are you pulling things? I am an Instagram save in a shared folder. Send screenshots. I still buy magazines when I go to airports. I love to look through. September Vogue, that is my Super Bowl. I also love the Super Bowl. But it's a thrill for me to be able to now pick out a pair of jeans or tell Leon, I really enjoy this. And sometimes I get to wear that actual piece. I feel like Samantha Jones. I feel like that to me is awesome. And you're a jewelry girl. I am the jewelry girl. I got some good jewelry for dinner. We got some good jewelry coming out. I do love jewelry. And I believe in commemorate yourself. I bought my watch when I got a new contract with ESPN. I got my watch when I got my job at Harper's Bazaar. See? And when you look at it, you say, look at me, I was right on time. Exactly. I was right on time. So finding those moments. Treat yourself. You know, as we all know, the sports media world is overwhelmingly male dominated. I think it's about over 85% of reporters are men. Still? According to a study done in 2021. It's also a really intense industry. You obviously know this. How do you navigate being evaluated for what you say and also how you look without letting it shrink you or really get to you? Sometimes it gets to me. But I do think that those 85% men, 83% are the most like wonderful, helpful, supportive. My experience in this industry with my peers has largely been when I had doubts about myself, other people giving me, reminding me reasons to take that next step. I don't feel the statistic on a daily basis. I feel it when I walk into a big new room and I'm waiting for someone to say, oh, you're different. Just like you did in high school or all these places. I think I'm in a position now though, where I've been doing this for so long and I hope respected for what I do that I think that my work walks in with me. Yeah. And that's a really nice feeling. So my task now is just because I said, oh, it's that 85, just because I don't feel it. My task now that I have earned a ticket to hang with the 85% or whatever is to work for other people to get in there, to be able to change those numbers. So I don't feel that on a daily basis, but I do think that it's my job to pull up the people. I try to spend time once every couple of weeks, search in my email, respond to all the students in there and take particular care of the women who look like me. Yeah. You know, on this show, we often speak to women who say that their fashion choices or their beauty choices are a bit of like their armor. I'm curious if you feel the same way. I think that my shoes were because I, everyone thinks I'm really tall and I'm tall-ish, but I'm not tall for basketball. I'm like five, six and a half. So people are surprised. I think when they learn that, you know, even on TV, I thought you look really, really tall when I sit next to players cause I'm wearing like, you know, a good, I love a 120. Oh. Yeah. Give me a 120 and I will do sidelines in a 105. Whoa. Yeah. So I don't, I don't, I think that that was an armor for me. Yeah. Was like, I will project as big and tall and I'm just now starting to kind of. Get comfortable with it. Comfortable at being literally looked down on. I wanted to be eye to eye with people. This episode is sponsored by Nexus. So I want to talk about hair a little bit more deeply as well. Athletes talk about performance gear. I'm curious if you think about hair care as performance gear too, like something that supports you doing your job at the highest level. Absolutely. Yeah. I always thank my hair and makeup team after the NBA finals or the draft or big events because they have made it so that I can focus on the work because I'm not worried about the other pieces because that's a part of it. We are journalists, but we are presenting and performing and sharing with the world. It's a visual medium. And they allow me to be able to focus on the content of my work as opposed to the package that it comes in. Yeah. And the care that they take of me in my most worried, vulnerable, prepping, am I going to get this right moments is how I get to where I want to go in front of the world. So when they send me home and I'm like, I got to go, I got to go. And so he's like, yeah, let me rake this mask through your hair really quick before we leave, just throw it up and you'll be fine. All of that is what allows me, I'm not someone who likes to slow down. I'm being in some ways right now, the way my voice, I'm getting forced to, my body is literally telling me, hey, and your hair will do the same thing. Your skin will do the same thing. Your body keeps the score. And doing that care is what allows me to keep driving this like Lamborghini speed. Although I'm a little bit afraid of speed. I'm a tenant too. But I do think that that's a part of it. Yeah, I completely agree. Before I let you go, we always like to end this podcast with three questions about money, style and power. A bit of a lightning round. So I'm terrible at lightning rounds. I guess I have like, let me tell you my entire life story. Okay. Lightning, fast speed. Usain Bolt. Go. Okay. What's one thing money can't buy? Happiness. If you could trade closets with anyone, who would it be? And why? If I could trade closets with anyone, I would trade closets with Emma Gree. Do I have to say more? Okay. And lastly, what's your go-to song when you want to feel powerful? I was about to start singing it. Yeah. Having a really good time. I'm not complaining. And I'ma still wear a smile when it's raining. I love that. I wish I could sing. Money cannot buy a voice. If I could sing, you wouldn't be able to tell me anything. I would be just, oh, if I was Celine Dion. Oh, Celine, love her. Oh my gosh. Malika, this has been so great. Thank you for joining me on Nice Stuff. Thank you for talking nice with me. If you liked today's episode, please subscribe to Nice Talk wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to rate and review us. We'd love to hear your feedback and suggestions for the show. So feel free to reach out to us on Instagram at MarieClairmag or directly to me at Nikki Ogum. We can't wait to hear from you. I'm Nikki Ogunnake, and I'll see you next Thursday for another Nice Talk. This episode was produced by Hilary Kerr, Summer Hammerus, and Natalie Thurman. Our production assistant is Raven Yamamoto. Our editor is Natalia Perez. Our audio engineers are at Treehouse Recording in Los Angeles, and our music is by The Meth Club. Thank you again to Nexus for supporting today's conversation. Nexus has spent decades studying what actually gives hair its strength, the proteins that shape it, protect it, and help it hold up over time. Their approach is simple but powerful. Haircare built to repair damage and help prevent what comes next so your hair can keep up with everything you're asking of it. Because this isn't about chasing one perfect hair day. It's about confidence, longevity, and showing up as yourself again and again. Nexus. Long live hair.