In June 1990, Chen began interning alongside
Andy Cohen at
CBS Morning News, where she answered phones and copied faxes for distribution. The following year, while still in school, she worked for
ABC NewsOne for one season as a desk assistant. She was subsequently promoted to work as a producer for the next three years. The following year, she relocated to
Dayton, Ohio, to work as a
local news reporter for
WDTN-TV, from 1995 to 1997. In 2015, Chen revealed on
The Talk that during her time in Dayton her
news director had told her that she would never become a
news anchor because of her "Asian eyes". After a "big-time agent" agreed and advised her to get plastic surgery, she made the decision to have a
surgical procedure to reduce the
epicanthic folds of her eyes. From 1999 to 2002, Chen was the anchor of
CBS Morning News and news anchor of
CBS This Morning and later
The Early Show, alongside
Bryant Gumbel,
Jane Clayson,
Hannah Storm,
Harry Smith,
Maggie Rodriguez,
Erica Hill, and
Rene Syler. From 2002 to 2010, she was a co-host of
The Early Show on CBS, before leaving the daily position but remaining as a special contributing anchor of the program until its cancelation. Before
CBS News, she was a reporter and weekend anchor at
WCBS-TV in New York City. '' co-hostesses Julie Chen,
Aisha Tyler,
Sharon Osbourne, show creator
Sara Gilbert, and
Sheryl Underwood in 2012|209x209px Since 2000, she has also been the host of the American version of
Big Brother. During the
first season (2000), Chen was widely criticized for her heavily scripted, wooden delivery in her interaction with the studio audience and in the interviews on the live programs, earning her the nickname "Chenbot". She has indicated in two interviews that she takes no personal offense at the term, adding that it may derive from her "precise on-air style" which comes from "a desire to be objective." She again acknowledged the nickname when she proudly proclaimed, "I am the Chenbot!" in a segment on
The Early Show. Chen was the moderator and co-host of the
CBS Daytime talk show,
The Talk, which premiered on October 18, 2010. The show featured Chen, the show creator
Sara Gilbert,
Sharon Osbourne,
Leah Remini,
Holly Robinson Peete and
Marissa Jaret Winokur. Chen says that Remini and Robinson Peete complained about her to CBS and demanded that she be ousted from the show. Instead, it was the two actresses who were gone after the first season. Chen says she has since reconciled with them. On September 18, 2018, Chen announced in a prerecorded tape that she would not be returning to
The Talk because she needed "to spend more time at home with [her] husband", after a number of sexual assault allegations surfaced against her husband Les Moonves. In her 2023 audiobook
But First, God: An Audio Memoir of Spiritual Discovery, she says she was
"collateral damage" following the decision to oust Moonves at CBS. She says the day before Season 9 of
The Talk premiered, she was told that "two of my co-hosts called the powers at CBS and said, 'If Julie shows up to work tomorrow, we're not coming in.' So, I was basically told, 'Please don't come back to work anymore.'" Her
Talk co-hosts at the time were Gilbert, Osbourne,
Sheryl Underwood and
Eve. ==Personal life==