Being the first to achieve something is exciting, but it also can bring on doubt. Doubt about if you're doing it right. Doubt about if you're letting anyone down. Doubt about whether being the first means there will ever be a second.
Malika Andrews knows these feelings well. In 2020, Andrews became ESPN's youngest sideline reporter, and in 2022, she became the first woman to host the NBA draft. She's gone on to host the draft every year since.
On the latest episode of "Nice Talk", Andrews opens up about the pressure that comes with titles like "first" and "youngest", from wanting to appear older to the tough question she began asking herself.
"Being the first means you don't want to be the last, and we have still a 'prove it' society," Andrews tells Marie Claire editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike. "When you are the first person to do something—especially when you are the first woman, let alone the first Black woman—you are looking to give people a reason for this to continue."
Similarly, she felt pressure from being one of the youngest people in her workplace—though this pressure was largely internal.
When she was starting her career, Andrews says, "I was dressing like I took nana's curtains, cut them off, and wrapped them around me. I was like, I will be taken seriously if it is the last thing I do! I am 25, but you will be thinking I am a ma'am! I was so nervous."
She attributes this, in part, to women being told "that we need to justify the reason that we are in a room, instead of walking in knowing that our qualifications will speak for themselves."
After being labeled the “youngest,” Andrews naturally began to worry about what it would mean when she no longer was. The NBA Today host recalls an exchange with a tennis legend that unexpectedly helped her move past that concern.
"I was down in the Australian Open and I had a birthday when I was down there," Andrews shares. "And John McEnroe, he asked me how old I am ... 'What are you? Twenty-one?' I was like, 'No, I'm actually 31.' He goes, 'Oh, that's a real age.' And I was like, No one's ever told me that. Got it. I'm finally at the real age."
She continues, "I do think for so long I've had that qualifier that I did start to let the green monster of doubt creep in. What happens when I'm not just the youngest? Am I still good enough? And so now I get to play in the space of being ... 'still young.'"
Andrews says she has an "ease and a comfort" with hosting NBA Today, so now she takes on new assignments—like covering tennis—"not from a place of pressure, but a place of joy."
"I'm chasing butterflies," she says. "These new assignments that give me the feeling of being nervous and alive."
For more from Andrews—including her advice for her younger self and why she was scared to admit she wanted to be on TV—check out this week’s installment of "Nice Talk". The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.