The ABC talk show The View went off the rails once again this week. This time, Whoopi Goldberg slapped her co-host Sara Haines after she made an oral sex joke about their co-host Joy Behar.
The View Derails
During Wednesday morning’s episode of The View, Goldberg, Behar, and their co-hosts talked about professional warnings that they have experienced in the past.
“My agent at the time told me not to take The View, and, in retrospect, he might’ve been right,” recalled Behar, 83. “I was told, ‘Change your voice,’ which I can’t. ‘Change your name.'”
“It’s so iconic, why would you change it?” Haines, 48, chimed in to ask.
“Because I sound like I have Jimmy Hoffa in the back of my throat,” Behar replied as the audience laughed.
“Well, did you?” Haines questioned. This was seemingly a reference to Behar’s running joke about having “dated” various historical figures.
Goldberg, 70, responded to this by slapping Haines on the arm with her cue cards. Haines then collapsed into Goldberg with laughter.
Unfazed by this exchange, Behar went on to exclaim, “But, he told me, ‘Don’t take The View!'”
Check out this full bizarre segment for yourself in the video below.
Behar’s History On The View
Behar was one of the original cast-members on The View when it premiered back in 1997. She has been a co-host on the ABC talk show ever since, with the exception of a brief two-year departure. Indeed, Behar was fired from The View by the late Barbara Walters back in 2013.
“I was glad to be fired,” Behar told TIME in 2022. “I was basically was sick of the show at that point for some reason, I don’t even remember why.”
Behar doubled down on this when she was interviewed by Ramin Setoodeh for his 2019 book Ladies Who Punch.
“I had been planning to get out of there,” Behar said, adding that she was “just bored.”
When ratings for The View began to dip after Behar’s departure, however, executive producer Hilary Estey McLoughlin knew that she needed to take action.
“I just knew that we needed to get back into the cultural conversation,” McLoughlin revealed. “I knew [Behar] was going to be the person who could actually do that. She’s always been the person who says what the audience is thinking but is afraid to say.”
Behar returned to The View in 2015, and she’s been on the show ever since. These days, she’s still enjoying her work on the ABC talk show.
“I’m sort of on extra time now. I don’t have to work, I don’t have to be on television,” Behar previously said. “I don’t have to have the microphone. They want to give it to me, I’ll take it.”
Goldberg And Haines
As for Goldberg, she’s been a co-host of The View since 2007. Meanwhile, Haines was initially cast on The View from 2016-2018. After leaving to co-host another program, Haines returned to The View in 2020, and she’s been on the show ever since.
These days, it often seems like things are messier than ever on The View. Only time will tell how much longer ABC executives decide that it’s worth keeping the likes of Behar and Goldberg around!