LESLEY: So, Mika Brzezinski, we are delighted and thrilled that you’re with us today. This is so nice of you. I know how busy you are, and we love "Morning Joe" and we love you on it. You cover the news by chitchat, and it absolutely works. So my first question is: How did the format evolve? How did you all get to this?

MIKA: That’s a great question and I think it has a lot to do with how Joe and I both evolved up and to the point that we started doing the show, which is basically the point that we met. As you know, I’d been at CBS for quite some time, twice, and MSNBC before. So I’ve been around. A good 20 years or so in TV will beat you up a little bit. And my departure from CBS was painful.

LESLEY: It was pretty ugly, wasn’t it? Pretty ugly.

MIKA: It was pretty ugly and I don’t lie about that. It really hurt. I hated leaving. I loved everyone there. I still do. And it was a very difficult experience, in terms of trying to figure out what you’re made of and your identity. I considered it very much a part of me. Joe had been in Congress, has been around the block in politics and he’s been beat up a time or two. And we both were kind of thrown together. I met him and Paul and he was about to do the show the next day, to fill in for the Imus show that had been thrown off the air.

LESLEY: Right.

MIKA: And Joe wanted the job and he had a vision for it, he just didn’t know who he wanted to do it with. I met him in the hall. He said to me, “Oh, you’re freelancing here and I noticed that when you talk back to my show, ‘Scarborough Country,’ during these news updates, you’re kind of making fun of my show.” And I said, “I don’t make fun of any show I haven’t watched.”

LESLEY: Oh, Mika! Mika!

MIKA: I really hadn’t watched. I was busy doing homework with my kids between news updates, not watching "Scarborough Country." I was sort of getting by, quite frankly, because I had come back into the business after a year of not being able to find a job and no one wanting to hire me at all. And I was still getting my bearings, and certainly wasn’t going to spend my time watching cable talk. So he immediately keyed into that comment and thought, “Hmm, she doesn’t give a damn.”

LESLEY: Ha! I love it.

MIKA: So we went on the air basically two or three days later, in the morning, starting at six o’clock AM. The red light went on and, Lesley, we didn’t even know it went it on. We didn’t care. We were just gabbing away and we did whatever we wanted. We talked about what we were interested in; we broke all the rules. We had intelligent discussions that went on for long periods of time. We had fun. We totally made fun of the news business and ourselves and politics, as well as covered it.

LESLEY: I really love when Joe says something and you roll your eyes, but it’s kind of sweet. It’s not mean. It’s sassy. I love the chemistry between the two of you.

MIKA: Absolutely.

LESLEY: You’ve now taken us in about 20 different directions for me to ask you questions, so I’m going to stop asking about the show, but I’ll come back to it. You can’t leave us hanging on when CBS fired you. We’re not going to gloss over it. As you said, you were very honest about it.

MIKA: Yes.