Amy Robach got a small glimpse of the injustices many Black men deal with in the United States after an encounter involving her boyfriend, T.J. Holmes, on a flight to Los Angeles resulted in the 46-year-old former TV host being racially profiled.
Holmes and Robach discussed the incident on the April 30 episode of their “Amy and T.J. Podcast.” Holmes noted that he is treated differently as a Black man in society, to which Robach replied, “Very differently.”
Holmes and Robach were on a flight to Los Angeles recently, and according to the former “Good Morning America 3: What You Need to Know” hosts, a woman accused Holmes of stealing her phone during the flight.
Holmes said that he got up to use the restroom during the flight, and after he came out, a woman accused him of theft. The couple had been talking about how badly flight attendants are treated by customers.
“I was just recently accused of stealing somebody’s cellphone on a flight,” said Holmes. “It actually happened,” added Robach.
“We’ll get into this later about things you’ve witnessed as watching a Black man go through some of the same, I guess, scenarios in life, but getting treated differently,” he said, prompting Robach to say, “Very differently. I have.”
“I was using the bathroom up front,” he continued. “I come out, and there’s a flight attendant standing there with this little old lady … white, dirty-blond hair. She’s standing there, and the flight attendant asks, ‘Did you see a phone in there?’ and I immediately turned around and said, ‘Oh, no. I didn’t see anything.’”
Holmes added that the woman stepped toward him and gestured while saying, “Oh, you don’t have it?!”
“And she is a short lady,” he continued. “So, I actually crouched down, I put my hands on my knees and got down on her level, and I say, ‘Ma’am, are you telling me I took your phone?’”
“Sure enough, she found her phone in a seat somewhere,” he added before noting that the mortified woman screamed across the aisles, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it at that point,” noted Robach. Holmes added that as a Black man, he had to remain calm, but he was angry. “I have to be calm. I have to be,” he said.
Holmes and Robach were infamously fired from co-hosting “Good Morning America 3: What You Need to Know” on ABC after it was revealed that the two were in a romantic relationship. Both were married to other people at the time — Robach to “Melrose Place” actor Andrew Shue and Holmes to attorney Marilee Fiebig.
Reactions were less than empathetic after The Jasmine Brand shared the flight story on Instagram with the caption, “#AmyRobach is standing by her man!”
One fan replied, “As my Grandmother would say, close my door and get out my room with this here foolishness.” Another fan wrote, “God don’t give you peace in a mess.”
“She’s just realizing that?” asked one commenter.
Another Instagram user replied, “These two are exhausting!”
A few fans did have more empathy for the former “GMA3” host and replied, “Why would he need to steal a cellphone? That’s idiotic!” Another added, “Black men have it hard in America.”
In an interesting twist, Shue and Fiebig have been dating for several months.
