Background
Matenopoulos was born in Richmond, Virginia, of Greek ancestry. She is the daughter of Efrosini, a hair stylist, and Nicolaos T. Matenopoulos, a furniture maker.
Actor journalist television presenter
Matenopoulos was born in Richmond, Virginia, of Greek ancestry. She is the daughter of Efrosini, a hair stylist, and Nicolaos T. Matenopoulos, a furniture maker.
Matenopoulos went to John Randolph Tucker High School, and then attended Virginia Commonwealth University for one year before transferring to the Journalism Department at New York University.
Despina was later anglicized to Debbie. While at New York University she also worked at Music Television as an international She quickly moved up the ranks, soon becoming story coordinator for UnFiltered.
In 1997, after a chance meeting with Barbara Walters, Matenopoulos became a co-host on Walters"s new talk show, The View.
She was parodied on Saturday Night Live as being an uninformed ditz and eventually invited on SNL as a guest. In 1999, she was abruptly fired from the show and replaced by Lisa Ling.
Later that same year, she joined the television Guide Channel. Matenopoulos has played Lisa Swayzak in the 2000 film Endsville, and starred in the claymation show Celebrity Deathmatch as herself.
In January 2004, Good Day Live brought in Matenopoulous (along with Arthel Neville) to co-host the nationally syndicated program
On September 29, 2004, she was hospitalized for an injury that was the result of a stunt she attempted for a segment of Good Day Live. The segment was focused on firefighter training, in which she practiced a fall from a three-story building at a Los Angeles fire station. She landed incorrectly on an airbag and was rushed to the hospital for a possible head injury.
lieutenant was a closed head wound and she was temporarily blind.
Despite massive promotion, including a mall-tour featuring Matenopoulous and Arthel Neville, Good Day Live was canceled by its syndicators in March 2005. In 2004, she was part of the panel of celebrity judges in the Turner Broadcasting System Superstation show He"s a Lady.
In January 2006, Matenopoulos joined East!"s coverage of the Golden Globe Awards. In April of that same year, she became one of the three hosts on East!"s weeknight celebrity gossip and popular culture series, The Daily 10, a position she held until August 2009.
On July 25, 2006, over seven years after her last appearance on The View, she was invited back as a special guest co-host for a day.
Matenopoulos has also been a frequent contributor to Video Hits One specials, including I Love the 90s and I Love Toys. She has also been a guest judge on RuPaul"s Drag Race 3. Since July 6, 2015, Matenopoulos is the co-host of The Insider, replacing Thea Andrews.
She was a member of the women"s fraternity Alpha Omicron Pi.