Catfight! Insiders Say ‘The View’ Hosts Ticked at ABC After Whoopi’s Hiatus – ‘Every One of Them Wanted [It]’

Whoopi Goldberg’s two-week absence from “The View” set off a fight over the moderator’s chair, and the U.K.’s Daily Mail reported that the rest of the panel is angry ABC did not open it to them.

Goldberg, 70, said on the show’s “Behind the Table” podcast that she was leaving the Hot Topics table to film “Women Like Us,” a Netflix movie produced by the Obamas.

Producer Brian Teta confirmed on that same episode that Joy Behar would moderate while she was gone, and Goldberg’s own response was a joke: “Is Joy up for it?”

Entertainment Weekly reported the hiatus was planned so she could shoot on weekdays and still appear on “The View” on Mondays.

According to the Daily Mail, producers put Behar, 83, in Goldberg’s seat almost as soon as the hiatus was set.

Behar is the longest-serving original co-host, on the panel since the show launched in 1997, and she already moderates when Goldberg is out.

A network source told the British news outlet that the decision was never a contest. “Joy moderates the show on Fridays, on ‘The Weekend View,’ and when Whoopi is out,” the source said. “As soon as the show knew Whoopi would be out for her movie, they knew Joy would moderate. It was always the plan.”

That plan did not land well with Sunny Hostin, Sara Haines, Ana Navarro, and Alyssa Farah Griffin, insiders told the Daily Mail. The paper said the four were left feeling that management did not even rotate the role for a fortnight.

“Every one of them wanted that chair,” a source said. “This was the perfect opportunity to rotate the moderator role and see who could command the table. Instead, producers immediately went back to Joy.”

A second insider asked what more the others had to prove after years at the table. A third insisted nobody was taking anything from Behar, then posed what the paper called a very uncomfortable question: If ABC will not trust anyone else to lead for two weeks, when does their turn come?

Entertainment Weekly reported that former co-hosts Lisa Ling, Star Jones, Sherri Shepherd, and Debbie Matenopoulos were booked to fill Goldberg’s empty seat on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, while Behar stayed in the center. The substitutes got a visit, and the regulars did not get the job.

None of this is a surprise on a show that has had sold on-air conflict for nearly 30 years. The same women paid to pick fights with guests, and with one another, are now reportedly picking a fight over who gets to run the table.

Ladder-climbing is the only promotion the format offers. Goldberg has held the center for the better part of two decades, and everyone else has watched that chair the way an understudy watches a lead who rarely calls in sick.

The Daily Mail’s sources insisted the frustration is not personal. The less polite reading is that each co-host saw a two-week opening and decided she was ready to be the next one.

Who sits there is a question the audience settled a long time ago. These are women paid to be loud, certain, and wrong before lunch, and the work does not improve because the nameplate moves six inches toward the camera.

An ignorant harpy does not upgrade the gig by becoming the head ignorant harpy. The salary might, the clips might, and the bookings might, which is why the chair mattered inside the building and why it should not matter outside of it.

ABC, for once, did something ordinary: It gave the temporary assignment to the woman who already does it on Fridays, on the weekend edition, and every other time Goldberg has been off the set, which is exactly what the network source described to the Daily Mail.

Behar is not the youngest co-host at the table, and she is not the panelist the show’s own politics would treat as the symbolic choice. She is the one with the longest record in that seat, which is the sort of boring criterion a network uses when it wants the hour to start on time.

That is meritocracy, or at least seniority, and on this panel both are treated as the same. The co-hosts who spend their mornings explaining why experience is a cover for exclusion just watched experience decide who fills in for Whoopi.

They can keep asking when their turn comes. However, Goldberg is expected back this week.

A fight over a chair nobody outside ABC wanted was never going to produce a better show.

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