Cynthia Erivo Called Sunny Hostin Over Her Controversial Cornell 7 Opinion
Sunny Hostin says the Wicked Witch of the West had some positive feedback amid all the backlash on her comments about the Cornell frat bros accused of rape ... with Cynthia Erivo encouraging her to lead with empathy in the future.
via: EW
The View cohost and former federal prosecutor Sunny Hostin has revealed that backlash to her controversial on-air remarks about the alleged Cornell sexual assault case got so strong that it elicited a personal phone call from her friend and fellow sorority sister, Cynthia Erivo.
“I see things, when it comes to the law, sort of black-and-white. I apply the facts as I know them to the law,” Hostin, 57, said on Monday’s episode of the show’s Behind the Table podcast (below), after she’s weathered nearly a week of blowback over her initial statements about the Cornell Seven case. “It’s my job, in a sense, on this panel. When I first talked about this topic on the panel, I led with the law. Because everyone else had spoken emotionally about it.”
As she clarified on a subsequent episode of The View, Hostin said of the alleged gang rape case: “I needed, I felt, to bring us back to this New York law, which is really terrible and needs to be changed. In the second segment, I was comfortable enough after I’d spoken to the law, to speak about the moral issue, because the morality of what happened is very different from the legality of what happened.”
“She called me and said, ‘Sis, I know you and I know your heart and your life’s work has been about protecting women and children. But, the clip that I saw doesn’t reflect who you are,’” Hostin noted. “She then said, ‘I’m a blunt person and you are a blunt person.’ That’s why we get along so well, because we get the BS out when we talk to each other. She said she’s had to learn to give people her opinion in a way that they can receive it rather than just be blunt.”
Hostin said Erivo advised that, “Instead of leading with the law, I need to lead with empathy so that people can receive the message about the law. That’s why the next time we talked about it, I led with that so that people would be able to receive the facts that, in New York, if you’re voluntarily intoxicated you’d have to be completely passed out, affirmatively say no, or you would have to be drugged involuntarily to prove sexual assault.”
Entertainment Weekly has reached out to Erivo’s representatives for comment.
Earlier in the episode, Hostin again explained her initial reaction to the case, after a woman — identified only as “Jane Doe” — first reported an alleged incident to Cornell in 2024. In 2026, Jane Done filed a lawsuit against the university, seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity, and more. (Several of the men have denied wrongdoing, as The View producer Brian Teta said on Behind the Table.)
“I was accused of defending these young men, and victim-shaming, which is something I would never do since I spent the majority of my career prosecuting sex crimes,” Hostin told Teta. “So, I was kind of fascinated by the way people received the information that I gave, which was ultimately the law in New York must be changed because the bar is so very high. In New York, once someone is voluntarily intoxicated, to prove sexual assault. It’s already beyond a reasonable doubt, and then you add that on to it, the burden becomes so high. It’s almost impossible to prove sexual assault.”
Last week, Hostin made headlines for her comments, telling The View audience that “it’s important to understand why the DA did not bring a case in 2024,” after she reviewed Doe’s initial 2024 statement.
Hostin said that Doe “voluntarily drank a lot” and “voluntarily snorted ketamine off of one of the boys’ body parts” as what she felt was a questionable point in the plaintiff’s case.
“She allowed other boys and consented to other boys snorting ketamine off of her body, and under New York law, voluntary intoxication or drug use that merely impairs judgment does not legally constitute an inability to consent to sexual activity,” Hostin said, in her legal opinion. “That means if you voluntarily ingest drugs, voluntarily take alcohol, you can agree to have threesomes — which, in her statement, she agreed to have two separate threesomes.”
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