Katie Couric recently admitted to Good Housekeeping that she had felt "constrained" at CBS, saying she felt "liberated" after she left the network.
That new-found liberation is well on display as Couric gears up for her new talk show "Katie," which is set to air September 10 on ABC at 3 p.m. EST. Couric is positively punchy in an on-going series of candid, behind-the-scenes videos (in the "Catching Up With Katie" video below, Couric talks about aging in an "It's just us girls" confessional tone in her bathroom).
The 24-year broadcasting vet already has a plum set of guests lined up for the show's debut, from celebrities to newsmakers like flesh-eating bacteria survivor Aimee Copeland and the mother and sister of murdered UVA lacrosse player Yeardley Love.
In keeping with Couric's own switch from anchor to daytime television host, each conversation in September will be about the guest's reinvention and "new beginnings," according to the show's website. On the show's first episode, fashion designer, recording artist and new mom Jessica Simpson will discuss the challenges of being a mother and losing weight under the paparazzi's glare. Sheryl Crow -- who also wrote and performed "This Day," the reinvention-minded theme song for "Katie" -- will appear to discuss her recently diagnosed brain tumor for the first time.
Who else will be appearing on "Katie"? "Fifty Shades of Grey" writer E.L. James, fellow talk show host Wendy Williams, Barbara Streisand, Susan Sarandon, Jennifer Lopez and Amanda Knox's former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, who will be making his American television debut on the show to talk about his former life in prison. (Sollecito and Knox were convicted in 2009 of murdering Knox's roommate, Meredith Kercher, in 2007. The two have since been acquitted of the crime)