Dark Secrets Of The Cast Of The View

Since its debut on Aug. 11, 1997, The View has offered audiences many explosive moments. The premise of the daytime talk show, created by veteran television journalist Barbara Walters, is simple: a panel of diverse women share their views (get it?) on the hot topics of the day.

The View has gone through many iterations and hosts during its 22-year run, but the drama has remained a constant. Whether it be Meghan McCain storming off the set after a heated exchange with guest Ana Navarro, or former co-host Star Jones quitting live on-air, the show always brings the goods.

However, thanks to journalist Ramin Setoodeh's 2019 book, Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of The View, we now have an inside look at what goes on behind-the-scenes. SPOILER: it could be its own reality show.

But we're not stopping there. Hot mics, hallway fights, and secret crushes are all invited to the table as we take a look at the dark secrets of the cast of The View.

Fox News host Jeanine Pirro brought her unwavering brand of Trump support to The View in 2018 to promote her book Liars, Leakers, and Liberals: The Case Against the Anti-Trump Conspiracy. As expected, she and liberal co-host Whoopi Goldberg got into a heated argument in which Pirro accused The Color Purple star of having "Trump Derangement Syndrome."

The argument continued after the cameras stopped rolling, and depending on who you ask, what happened is up for debate. During an appearance on Fox & Friends, Pirro claimed Goldberg confronted her in the hallway, cursed her out, and commanded her to leave the studio. However, addressing the confrontation the next day on-air, Goldberg said that it was Pirro who became combative. 

"She came off, she could have just passed me, she didn't need to stop but she stopped, and put her finger in my face and yelled, 'I've done more for victims than you ever will!' Then I said to her some few choice words I cannot repeat," Goldberg said. "Yes, I did say it, I did say it. But, I did not spit on her, I did not intimidate her, no one chased her out of here, saying, 'Get out,' but she did leave here cursing at the people who book the show. She cursed at the guys who do the security for the show." 

Regardless of who you believe, it was a dark moment for a show that purports to inspire civil discourse. 

If you watched any of The View from 2006-2007, you know that former co-hosts Rosie O'Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck seemed close to throwing blows at any second. Their diametrically opposed politics led to some of the most infamous arguments on the show, but according to Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of The View, O'Donnell had a secret, but platonic crush on the much younger Republican. 

What's more, O'Donnell believed Hasselbeck secretly shared her feelings, claiming that she sensed "underlying lesbian tones on both parts," which she justified by citing Hasselbeck's success as a team member on Boston College's "division one softball team." O'Donnell went further, explicitly stating to the book's author, "There are not many, in my life, girls with such athletic talent on sport teams that are traditionally male that aren't at least a little bit gay." 

As it turns out, Hasselbeck didn't share those feelings. 

Calling O'Donnell's comments "offensive" and "disturbing" during an appearance on Fox & Friends, Hasselbeck blasted the comedian for objectifying women in the workplace and using stereotypes of female athletes. However, Hasselbeck went on to say that she's forgiven her former co-worker due to her Christian faith. "I would pray for my friends; I hope that she has the peace of God," Hasselbeck said. "Even more than I want to be at peace with her, I hope she finds that peace because God wants that for her too."

According to Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of The View, former co-host Star Jones was the "nastiest" diva during her time on The View.

Author Ramin Setoodeh claimed that producers were required to follow a specific protocol when dropping off each show's Hot Topics to Jones: "They were not allowed to make eye contact or speak to Star; they'd been told to deliver the note cards on a bookshelf by the door and run." Setoodeh also alleged that Jones even made a producer cry on her first day on set to flex a power move. The janitorial staff wasn't walking around the set waving "Star Jones #1" foam fingers, either. On custodian allegedly had to clean up "the carcass of a crushed mouse" in Jones' dressing room, which was said to have been inadvertently killed because the room was "stacked with clothes and shoes."

Jones' alleged rude behavior and less than ideal cleanliness didn't make her many friends, but it did offer Jones a chance at some eventual self-reflection. "I think I got too big for my britches," Jones said in the book. "My ego started to take over, and I didn't know how to pull back. I didn't know how not to be larger-than-life."

"You know the movie Mommie Dearest?" Jenny McCarthy told author Ramin Setoodeh for his expose Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of "The View" (via Vulture). "I've never seen a woman yell like that before until I worked with Barbara Walters." The incident McCarthy refers to happened in 2007 when she appeared as a guest on The View to discuss her controversial anti-vaccination book, Louder Than Words: A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism.

However, before McCarthy sat down for the cameras, Walters summoned the former Playboy model to her dressing room "She was screaming, 'How dare you say this! That autism can be cured?' My knees were shaking. I remember my whole body was shaking." McCarthy claims this continued "for about seven minutes" until someone pulled her out. "I went back to my dressing room, not knowing what the f**k to do. One of my heroes just chewed me a new a**hole, and I'm going on live TV," McCarthy continued. "I'm freaking the f**k out."

Six years later, Jenny McCarthy accepted a co-hosting gig on the show, a decision that was met with widespread media objection. Her time on the show was no picnic, either. "Every day I went home and I was miserable," McCarthy told Setoodeh, adding, "It really was the most miserable I've been on a job in my 25 years of show business."

Once again, according to the book Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of The View, Rosie O'Donnell berated and threatened fellow co-hosts and staff in what Radar Online called a "reign of terror." Several people interviewed for the book described the A League of Their Own star's constant abrasive behavior led to "multiple HR complaints." 

O'Donnell reportedly made several jokes about Barbara Walters' age in an attempt to get the legendary newswoman fired, claiming that she was "much too old" to be on television. Walters then allegedly issued an ultimatum to ABC Daytime President Brian Frons – either Rosie goes, or she and co-creator Bill Geddie go. How did O'Donnell reportedly respond? By trying to get Geddie fired as well and "berating" him to the point that he took a temporary leave of absence. Yikes. As far as the HR complaints filed against O' Donnell? "It didn't do any good," The View director Mark Gentile said.

When interviewed for the book (via Radar Online), O'Donnell said all her former co-hosts "lie for a living" and claimed that the show is "unwatchable." Classic, Rosie.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck ended her decade-long run on The View in 2013, but it almost ended in 2006 when she nearly quit after a heated on-air argument with Barbara Walters that bled into the hallway following a commercial break (via Variety). During Hot Topics debate about the FDA's proposal to allow over-the-counter purchases of the morning-after pill, Hasselbeck, a staunch conservative, claimed the emergency contraception was "the same thing as birthing a baby and leaving it out in the street."

Walters had enough of that. "Could you stop now?" Walters said. "We have to go on, and we have to learn how to discuss these things in some sort of rational way." The show then cut to commercial, but not before Hasselbeck tore up her notecards, and well, that's when the real show started — at least, for the control room.

"F*** that!" Hassselbeck screamed in the later released audio recording of her backstage meltdown. "I'm not going to sit there and get reprimanded on the air." Co-host Joy Behar asked the upset Hasselbeck to come into her office to talk it out, but Hasselbeck kept raging: "What the f***! ... I'm not going back. I can't do the show like this. She just reprimanded me, and she knew exactly what she was doing. Good-bye! I'm off. Write about that in the New York f*****g Post!" Producer Bill Geddie eventually coaxed her back onto the stage, where she and Walters ended up hugging it out. 

Three years after Rosie O'Donnell's return to The View in 2014, was set to be a grandmother for the first time when her adopted daughter, Chelsea Alliegro, announced her pregnancy. But instead of O'Donnell welcoming the new bundle of joy alongside the daughter she adopted when she was just three months old, the former talk show host wasn't invited to be in the child's life at all.

"It's very exciting and I'm looking forward to it. But Rosie will not be in my child's life — and no, I do not feel sad about that to be honest," Alliegro told the Daily Mail about her pregnancy. Alliegro, then 20-years-old, said that Kelli Carpenter, her other adoptive mother and O'Donnell's ex-wife, would be the child's grandmother along with her husband's mother.

However, nearly a year later, O'Donnell and Alliegro reconciled, amid a different pregnancy. (Alliegro's previous pregnancy "did not result in her having a baby," according to People.) O'Donnell and Alliegro's strained relationship has made headlines in the past. In 2015, Alliegro ran away from home at 17, and denied O'Donnell's claim that she was mentally ill. "People think I'm this crazy person and as I've said, I have depression and bad anxiety — but it's been something that's gotten a lot better," she said (per People). "But these were personal things and I didn't want anyone to know them about me ... I would say lots of people struggle with what I have."