After months of hype following her departure from then-embattled Fox News, Megyn Kelly Today premiered Monday on NBC at 9 a.m. ET/PT, sandwiched between the 7 to 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. hours of The Today Show​.

She opened the show with a monologue on why she made the move from being one of Fox’s highest-profile anchors to the host of her own daytime show, a change that comes with considerable risk in the difficult daytime TV environment.

“I’m so excited, so excited. I’m also a little nervous, so please bear with me,” she said in the first minutes of her first day on her new job. “I am so grateful that you’re here as part of our first audience—you in studio and you at home too.

“As you heard we have the entire cast of Will and Grace live, along with the show creators. And then we’ll be dissecting the latest tweet from President Trump! Oh wait! We will not be doing that. The truth is, I’m kind of done with politics for now. I know. You know why, right? We all feel it, it’s everywhere. And it’s just gotten so dark.”

She then went on to describe how her father passed away suddenly of a heart attack when she was 15 and he was 45.

“In the summers, we used to go camping and my dad would play his guitar and would sing John Denver around the campfire. One of our favorites was Denver’s song, ‘Today.’ It’s about not wasting a moment. Making each day count. I didn’t really understand the message as a kid. But all too soon, I would come to understand. ... It happened in our home, ten days before Christmas and it was the single most devastating event of my lifetime,” she says.

From that tragic experience, she learned to make the most of every moment, including becoming a lawyer, working as an anchor, being married and having three kids who now are 4, 6 and 8.

“I knew I needed to make a change and then came 2016. So much division and outrage. I wasn’t happy. But I was scared to change. For years, I had dreamed of hosting a more uplifting show. But how? Where? What?

“Still no sign from my dad. Not long after that I had my first meeting with NBC News, who—low and behold—offered me a job, hosting a program whose mission would be to deliver hope. And optimism. And Inspiration. And empowerment. And to have fun! A show called Megyn Kelly Today. TODAY. It turns out, my dad was with me all along.”

Kelly went on to host a segment with the stars of NBC’s upcoming Will & Grace reboot, premiering Thursday, Sept. 28, on the network, as well as one featuring Donna Liette, a nun from Chicago who’s working to make her neighborhood better in a reoccurring segment called “Settle for More” after Kelly’s best-selling book.

Kelly was hired away from Fox News by NBC News last winter at a reported salary of $17 million a year. Over the summer, the network aired a news magazine show, Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly, that featured the news anchor interviewing the likes of Russian President Vladimir Putin and right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. But the program’s ratings fell throughout the summer and it was ultimately pulled from NBC’s schedule two weeks prior than originally planned.

RELATED: NBC Shows Softer Side of Megyn Kelly Ahead of Daytime Show Launch

NBC will likely need to show more patience with Megyn Kelly Today if it wants to take a serious run at establishing the hour as daytime appointment television. Daytime shows are notoriously slow to catch on, but if they do, they can run for years and be highly lucrative.

READ MORE: Variety

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