One of Dan Abrams’ many hats: hosting a SiriusXM series. Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images When entering Dan Abrams’ New York office, I had no idea what his abs looked like — not a topic that usually comes up in media profiles. By the time I walked out, that was no longer the case. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Abrams, a court reporter turned entrepreneur, has a résumé that prints out like a CVS receipt. He’s the CEO of content studio Law&Crime, which recently acquired Court TV, where Abrams got his start. He’s chief legal analyst at ABC News, founder and CEO of website Mediaite, host of SiriusXM radio series The Dan Abrams Show (SiriusXM POTUS) and host and exec producer of the cable series Court Cam (A&E) and On Patrol: Live (Reelz).
Picturing the man’s workday, one could use a drink — and Abrams has me covered. The father of two is a vineyard owner (Ev&Em, named after his kids), a restaurateur (Danny’s American Wine Bistro in the Flatiron District) and the purveyor of his Rotten Tomatoes-for-booze company The Daily Pour. “He’s always got his eye out for an opportunity,” Abrams’ friend and GMA colleague George Stephanopoulos tells me, and “the energy to pursue it.”
Until a few months ago, Abrams also counted NewsNation show Dan Abrams Live among his gigs. He finally had to say “when” with that one. “The truth is, the NewsNation show took up more than 50 percent of my day,” Abrams says. “The idea of giving up a cable news show — a primetime show — would never have been something I would have thought I’d do.”
Dan Abrams at his Ev&Em Vineyards in Laurel, New York. Mark Harrington/Newsday As if he weren’t already making the rest of us look lazy, Abrams also has authored six books — four of them New York Times best-sellers — and he’s got at least one more in him.
“I’m thinking about a health and fitness book called Scars, Sanity and a Six-Pack at 60,” Abrams tells me.
I can vouch for the scar and the six-pack. Abrams lifted his shirt to reveal a 12-inch surgical scar running from chest to — well, he’d have to take his pants off for that one, and this is still a place of business, last I checked.
“The cover would be that,” Abrams says, “showing a massive scar.” (And the six-pack, of course.)
Abrams is a survivor of testicular cancer (add that to his list of accomplishments). He was diagnosed in 2003 while working on-air at MSNBC. The doctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center told Abrams there was a 50 percent chance the cancer — which he self-discovered (“Check your balls; it could save your life,” he tells me) — had spread to the lymph nodes in his stomach.
“I was 37, single and completely freaked out,” he recalls.
Abrams kept the diagnosis and treatment to himself for about a year. He only shared his cancer journey publicly, via an eight-minute Today segment, after reading about the death of Sean Kimerling, a weekend sports reporter at WPIX Channel 11 in New York City. Abrams and Kimerling never knew each other but existed in similar orbits. Not only were they both NYC-based journalists, but they were the same age, had the same type of cancer and were treated at the same hospital at the same time.
“He almost looked like me,” Abrams says, “and he died of testicular cancer. That could have been me. It just happened that I discovered it earlier, and he didn’t.” Abrams has long been cancer-free; he stopped needing annual screenings in 2013.
A&E aired nearly 300 episodes of Live PD before it was canceled in 2020. A&E / Courtesy Everett Collection Abrams, who turned 60 on May 20, tries not to drink “at least” three nights a week, he tells me. When he does, it is either his vino or bourbon, which he fell for during the Live PD days. You remember Live PD (A&E), the hit On Patrol: Live predecessor that was knee-jerk canceled after George Floyd was killed in May 2020. Live PD was ended to appease employees at the basic cable channel, Abrams says. “I think that even the folks who made the decision to cancel Live PD would say in retrospect that it was a mistake. Now they would tell you that they didn’t have a lot of options, meaning there was a lot of pressure internally. It did feel like we were hung out to dry.
“I was angrier at the time than I am today,” he adds.
Well, sure, he almost lost his bourbon buddies.
“We started bringing in drinks because, you know, we’re there till midnight, right? No one has a social life on weekends if you’re doing the show Friday and Saturday nights,” Abrams said. “So, every Friday night, I would bring in some wine, other people brought in some whiskey. I started trying whiskey, and it does have the layers of flavor that wines have.”
Abrams’ palate is on display at Danny’s, which opened in October and sells what the titular Danny calls “elevated comfort food.”
The restaurant has “exploded,” Abrams said, and is “one of the hardest reservations to get in New York right now.” Worth it, Stephanopoulos vouches.
On opening night, he dined there with wife Ali Wentworth and another journalist/actress married couple, Peter Lattman and Isabel Gillies. “We had the fried chicken, which was excellent. We had a burger,” Stephanopoulos said. “It was awesome. We just split a bunch of stuff.”
When I asked Stephanopoulos to share an only-in-New-York story about Abrams, he thought for a moment, and then did me one better: “Well, you can’t get more New York than opening a restaurant named after yourself, in the hottest restaurant district in town.”
Dan’s Typical Friday
Michael Le Brecht II/ABC via Getty Images 7:15 a.m.Wake up and review newsletters from Axios, Politico and Punchbowl and scan Mediaite’s front page. Send notes to the producer of my SiriusXM show.
8 a.m. Go to the kitchen to sit with my daughter before she goes to school.
9 a.m. Gym for an hourlong workout: stretching, weights, rowing, running and jumping rope. 11 a.m. Make it to the office (the walk takes about 10 minutes). 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Full slate of meetings. Usually eat lunch at my desk around 1 (I don’t eat breakfast). 1-2 p.m. Free time to prepare for my show and as needed put out any professional fires. 2-3 p.m. My show is live. 3:30 p.m. May have an interview at ABC News for one of its longform documentaries.
4:30 p.m. Get picked up to go to Jersey City for On Patrol: Live. There is tons of traffic, so I usually arrive around 5:30 there
6 p.m. We have an early dinner there and then have our show meeting. 6:45 p.m. I go to makeup and am on set to shoot some promo content by 7 p.m. 7:30 p.m. Usually have a break and have to be on set at 8:30 p.m. to watch the live feeds coming in. 9 p.m. On Patrol: Live starts at 9 p.m. I’m on set until midnight. MIDNIGHT We then have pizza, bourbon and wine for about 30 to 45 minutes after the show, and I’m usually home around 1:15 a.m.
This story appeared in the May 20 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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