The TV personality revealed she regrets not discussing her weight or mental health on the show.
Star Jones has one major regret from her time on The View. In honor of the show's 25th anniversary, the 60-year-old TV personality reunited with Meredith Vieira, Debbie Matenopoulos, and Joy Behar, three of the four women alongside whom she served as an original co-host, and discussed what she wishes she'd been open about during her tenure. Barbara Walters, the show's creator and the other original co-host, was not present at the reunion.
"If I'm 100 percent honest, I regret not being strong enough to admit that I was in a depression and really ill about my health," Jones, who co-hosted the show from 1997 to 2006, said. "I really regret that I just wasn't there."
Behar praised Jones for how she's "grown tremendously since then," before reflecting on what it was like to watch her struggle behind the scenes.
"You thought it would've been great if one had said, 'Star, you need to lose weight. You're unhealthy,'" Behar recalled. "And I said, 'If I had said that to you, you would've bitten my head off.' And you said, 'Yes, I would've.'"
Jones acknowledged that her fellow co-hosts "were probably worried" about her health at the time, something Vieira confirmed.
"We were worried and we were also kind of, to be honest, a little angry about the dialogue, because we felt, 'This isn't honest,'" Vieira explained. "We've purported to be the honest women on this show and we stopped being totally honest with each other, which was not good."
Behar seconded Vieira's feelings about Jones' situation while speaking to The View's current co-hosts.
"Star never ever talked about her weight issue like that. She was in tremendous denial. We had to pretend it was something other than what it was. We didn't like that," she said. "We were told, 'You have to be an actress.' And it's like, 'Well, we don't get paid to be an actress,' but we had to."
"We were uncomfortable with that and now she realizes it," Behar added. "I have to give her credit, because she has come miles from where she was."
While Jones told the women that not being open about her health struggles "is a regret," she's thankful for how far she's come since then.
"It is my greatest achievement," she said, "that I'm healthier now than I've ever been in my whole life."
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