Whoopi Goldberg reveals the story behind spreading her mother's ashes at Disneyland and why she eventually confessed to park officials.
Whoopi Goldberg is making a shocking revelation about one way she chose to honor her late mother.
During a recent appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers, the 68-year-old co-host of The View shared how she spread her mother's ashes at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Goldberg's mom, Emma Harris, died of a stroke in 2010.
"No one should do this," Goldberg cautioned the audience. "Don't do it."
The EGOT winner explained that she chose to scatter her mom's ashes at the theme park, because "my mother loved Disneyland."
"When I was a kid, the World's Fair was here and it was the introduction of Small World," she said. The long beloved It's a Small World attraction was first introduced at the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair and later shipped to Disneyland, where it opened in May 1966.
"She loved Small World," Goldberg said of her mother.
The Sister Act actress shared that she would "periodically" pick up some of the ashes while on the ride and fake a big sneeze, pretending she had a cold.
"I'd say, 'My God, this cold is getting worse and worse,'" she joked.
"Then we got over to the flowers where it says 'Disneyland' and I was like, 'Oh, look at that,'" she continued.
Shortly after, Goldberg thought better of her decision and informed park officials about what she had done.
"I wanted to make sure, actually, that I hadn't done something that was dangerous," she admitted. "It hadn't occurred to me, but there's a reason they don't want ashes just floating around."
Goldberg recounts this story and many others in her memoir, Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me, which was released in May. Her brother, Clyde, died in 2015 from a brain aneurysm.
"This is really a love letter to parents and the people who raised me to be -- love me or hate me -- they raised me to be a halfway decent person," she told host Seth Meyers. "I'm not always decent, not always, but halfway."
While promoting the book's release, Goldberg told ET that now seemed like the perfect time to give her family the spotlight, given she was running up against time herself.
"I didn't know if now was the right time to tell the story. It was just what I decided I needed to do. It wasn't like a big revelation, and I think it's just because I was starting to forget some stuff, you know?" Goldberg said. "The book isn't really about me. It's about the trio of people, and so I wanted to hold on as long as I could and kept writing stuff and this came out."
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