The TV host doesn't hold back in an excerpt of the upcoming expose, 'Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of The View.'
Jenny McCarthy doesn't hold back.
The 46-year-old TV personality opens up about her "miserable" year at the view from 2013 to 2014 in Ramin Setoodeh's upcoming expose, Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of The View; in an excerpt just published by Vulture, McCarthy accuses Whoopi Goldberg of being controlling, and compares Barbara Walters to Mommie Dearest.
"You know the movie Mommie Dearest? I remember as a child watching that movie and going, ‘Holy cow!’ I’ve never seen a woman yell like that before until I worked with Barbara Walters," McCarthy candidly says.
Before the former model joined The View as a co-host in season 17, she appeared on the program to discuss her book, which argued that vaccines weakened her son's immune system and triggered his autism. Upon arriving at the studio, McCarthy recalls being asked by a producer to meet with Walters. "I walked into her dressing room and she blew up at me," she claims. "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 says that years later, Walters appeared to have forgotten about their disagreements. The mother of one says she was initially hired on The View to bring more pop culture commentary to the show, and stay away from politics. However, network execs realized that numbers were dropping after Elisabeth Hasselbeck left the show with her conservative viewpoints.
"They did try to change me. They wanted Elisabeth back, and I wasn’t Elisabeth. I would literally have meetings before the show of them trying to input opinions in me to go against Whoopi," McCarthy shares. "I was going to work crying. I couldn’t be myself. Every day I went home and I was miserable. It really was the most miserable I’ve been on a job in my twenty-five years of show business.”
Walters, meanwhile, found other issues with McCarthy. According to the TV host, the legendary journalist would often force McCarthy to change clothes. McCarthy says Walters, who was upset about being forced to retire from the The View, was incredibly temperamental. She also claims that Walters once screamed at her for a tampon floating in the communal toilet.
"'She’s standing in the hallway where the guests are, yelling at me about a tampon. I don’t know. Maybe in her brain, she went, ‘I’m going to the youngest, newest person here, because obviously she has her period and left a tampon floating,'" McCarthy says in the excerpt. "This is Barbara Walters. I’m not going to yell at her. So finally I said, ‘I’ll take care of it. I’ll take one for the team and I’ll flush it.’”
According to McCarthy, Walters also had problems with Goldberg, with their drama playing out on set everyday. "The table reminds me a little bit of Survivor. There was a war between Barbara and Whoopi about Barbara wanting to moderate. This is one of the reasons I decided not to ally with Whoopi. It broke my heart when Barbara would shuffle to Whoopi and say, ‘Can I moderate please?’ And Whoopi would say no,'" she says.
"People don’t understand. Whoopi can knock over anyone in a debate. Her voice is not only strong in meaning but in sound. I wasn’t going to play a kiss ass. To me, Whoopi had an addiction to controlling people’s thoughts, their words, the room, the table, your feeling, your mood," McCarthy adds. "She had an addiction to controlling all of it and everybody.”
Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of The View releases on April 2.
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