Jayne Kennedy has a life full of firsts: First Black Miss Cleveland, First Black Ohio, First Black woman hosting CBS’ JAYNE KENNEDY is an actress, sports broadcaster, television personality, writer, and producer.  Her accolades for being a trailblazer are numerous, including the National Sports Media Association’s Roone Arledge Award for Innovation, Black Enterprise’s Women of Power Summit’s Legacy Award, and the NAACP Image Award for Best Actress for the film Body & Soul, which she also produced. Viacom/BET named her one of the Ten Black Female Firsts in TV Journalism Around the World, and in 2018 she was inducted to the prestigious Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington D.C., in the Television and the Media Landscape exhibit, presented in the Oprah Winfrey Wing of the institution.

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From award-winning actress and sports broadcaster Jayne Kennedy comes a compelling, inspirational, and unflinchingly honest memoir about her rise in Hollywood and beyond.

Jayne Kennedy is one of the most photographed, glamorous, and intriguing women ever to set foot in Hollywood. Perhaps best known for her groundbreaking work in 1978–1980 on the Emmy Award–winning CBS program The NFL Today, she’s an icon and trailblazer in every sense of the word. From becoming the first Black woman to win Miss Ohio USA, to being the only woman to host the long-running syndicated television show Greatest Sports Legends, and pioneering the fitness industry with her bestselling Love Your Body exercise videos and fitness programs, nobody has had a career trajectory quite like Jayne. And she has never gone on the record about her personal experiences and the resulting joys and scars—until now. 

Her candid and conversational storytelling will endear her once again to her existing fans as well as open her up to a new audience that will admire her message of resilience and empowerment. Jayne has long been a beacon of Black and female excellence and has opened doors for female talent and media executives. Inducted into the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in their Television and the Media Landscape exhibit, Jayne is indeed a pioneer. Tracing her upbringing in Ohio and her journey shattering glass ceilings in American contemporary culture, Plain Jayne is a breathtaking story of endurance, survival, and achievement.

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I had been in the entertainment business for eight years at that point, and I was completely aware that auditions were very unpredictable. It could be a long, drawn-out showcase where you would really get a chance to make your mark, or it could be a total bust: “Hi. I’m Jayne Kennedy.” And they’d say, “Thank you very much.” Wham-bam, thank-you-ma’am, and you’re out the door.

It just so happened that Don King and Caesars Palace were throwing the International Sportsman Ball on June 8, 1978, the day before the Ken Norton versus Larry Holmes fight in Las Vegas and the Thursday night before my Sunday CBS audition. Leon and I were going to the ball, and I planned to leave for New York after the fight Friday night. So, we decided this was a perfect opportunity to gather some interview footage. Once we arrived, we borrowed a camera and crew from our friend Jim Hill, a CBS Sports anchor in Los Angeles, so that I could record some interview footage to take along with me to the audition. (Remember this was 1978—VCRs, camcorders, and cell phones were a thing of the future. Even in the early 1980s, people were only just beginning to have personal camcorders.)

I first asked Don King if he would be willing to be interviewed for my audition. I knew Don from many years back, and I had even assisted him in landing an interview with the press from Hong Kong at the “Thrilla in Manila.” I had no doubt that his answer would be “Of course.” Then I saw Julius Erving, and he also said yes. The great Minnesota Fats was sitting behind me at the ball, and I asked him for an interview as well, and when he agreed I was three-for-three. Jim Hill, Leon, and I put together the quickest interviews that you could ever imagine, and after the fight I raced to the airport and jumped onto the red-eye to New York with my unedited interviews tucked under my arm.

When I arrived at the Essex House Hotel in New York, there was a package of instructions and information for the audition, which would take place on Sunday at the CBS Studios on Fifty-Seventh Street. I spent the day researching and reviewing the packet outlining the process. The audition would be in three parts: some on-camera repartee with Brent, a segment reading teleprompter copy, and an in-studio interview with an NFL player TBD. CBS decided to give all the women who were auditioning equal time and access in preparation for the interview, so they didn’t reveal the name of the player we would be interviewing until late Saturday night.

When I got my interview pack, it had a name, a position, a team, and a sentence that said something about the player working with children with disabilities in the off-season. That was pretty much it—a few statistics, but not much to do an interview. Libraries were closed on Saturday night, and this was long before the internet or Google for doing any last-minute research, so there were zero resources whatsoever.

My NFL player interviewee was Clyde Powers, a strong safety who I did not know. All during dinner, which I ate in my room, I kept going back to the feature I had just seen on life in the NFL trenches—the kill-or-be-killed war mentality required to do the job well. I decided to make that the focus of our interview: How did he balance his game head with his desire to help people with disabilities?

Just before I went to bed, I called my friend ex-NBA player Ron Allen. I asked him what he thought were my best qualities. He never hesitated: “Jayne, everybody I know always talks about how unassuming and unpretentious you are. You’re so easy to talk to. You make people feel like they can open up to you without being threatened. However, when they first see you, they see your beauty and they are intimidated, but then you speak and you’re so warm, with your feet on the ground. That’s why guys like talking to you. They don’t expect it because of the way you look, and then when you smile, it’s like the smile of an old friend. It doesn’t matter who you are interviewing or what the interview is about, if you can make that person tomorrow feel like that, then you’ve got it made.”

I thought about that all night. I had never realized any of that before, and the information helped to calm me down quite a bit, even though it all came as quite a surprise.
Sunday morning, I walked into the CBS Studios fully prepared to do my best, and if I didn’t get a chance to do just that, I still had the taped Vegas interviews in hand. I felt very good about this whole thing, even though I still hated auditions. This was my dream job, and I was ready.
As soon as I walked into the conference room, all my hopes and dreams went down the toilet. There were about fifteen other girls there for the audition and they all had blonde hair. There was no way CBS was seriously considering me. Here I was again, the token Black girl.

I didn’t know what to do. It seemed like such a waste of time and energy. But since I was there, I decided to just relax and have fun with the day and chalk it up to another one for the books. All that morning the girls were racing around furiously, trying to get their act together for their scheduled appearance on the set. I sat and watched. It was Miami all over again—Miss Ohio sitting on the sidelines because t…