Copyright Us Weekly
Charissa Thompson did not almost die during a Thursday Night Football broadcast — a bad experience with a seafood tower only made her feel like it earlier that day. Thompson, 43, took to her “Calm Down with Erin and Charissa” podcast to set the record straight about what happened during the October 16 game between the Cincinnati Bengals and Pittsburgh Steelers. “Two weeks ago, I got sick before the game,” she recalled to cohost Erin Andrews on the Tuesday, November 4, episode. “I was sick in the morning at a production meeting. Came out of nowhere. We might have pinpointed it to the seafood tower from the night before, but either way, it hit me during the production meeting.” “By the time the game rolled around, I was lights, camera, action, bitch smile, no problem,” Thompson continued. “I didn’t have any issues on air. I didn’t even bring it up to my boss. It wasn’t even worth bringing up to my bosses because I was fine.” Thompson added that, despite reports to the contrary, she never said she suffered a major medical emergency during the game. She clarified that when Andrews, 47, brought the incident up on a previous episode, she did not mean literally that Thompson was going to die. “Erin said, ‘Oh, you’re going to die’ as a figure of speech because when you’re vomiting in a hotel garbage can, you feel like you’re going to die,” she said. “I’ll talk about anything on this podcast, but it has to be accurate information. I didn’t say anything about having a medical emergency during the broadcast. So, that’s my two cents. Fake news alert, alert, alert. I wasn’t going to die during the broadcast.” On the October 23 episode of “Calm Down,” Andrews compared Thompson’s broadcast the week before to Michael Jordan’s “flu game,” when Jordan scored 38 points for the Chicago Bulls in a 1997 NBA Finals game despite battling food poisoning. “You said you were going to die, and I said, ‘If you’re going to die, they’re going to bury you in that outfit because you look great,’” Andrews recalled. Thompson also explained her dedication to her job on the Thursday Night Football desk for Amazon Prime. “I love this job,” she said, “and I don’t want anyone else to take my job, try to come for my job. The seat that I’m lucky enough to sit in on Thursday night and on Sunday — even if things happen during the broadcast because it’s live television, or in studio, nothing would take away my enthusiasm for this job. They will have to drag me off the set and force me to quit this job before I ever do.” Who Is Your Favorite Current NFL Player? Thompson, who also works for Fox Sports, has been on Thursday Night Football broadcasts for Prime Video since 2022. She made headlines in 2023 for saying in an appearance on “Pardon My Take” that she would sometimes “make up” sideline reports earlier in her career. Thompson later clarified that when coaches would not make themselves available in-game, she would base her reports on what she “learned and saw.” “For example, if a team was 0 for 7 on third down, that would clearly be an area they need to improve on in the second half,” she wrote in a statement shared via her Instagram Story at the time. “In these instances, I never attributed anything I said to a player or coach.”
