‘The View’: Barbara Walters Was Forced to Quit the Show, According to Former Co-Host Lisa Ling
Legendary journalist Barbara Walters came up with a novel idea in the late 1990s: to create a talk show consisting of a panel of different women from different backgrounds to discuss the stories of the day. It eventually became The View, which launched on ABC in August 1997. But although she was the mastermind behind The View‘s creation, Walters was reportedly unceremoniously showed the door, just as several co-hosts have experienced over the years.
Barbara Walters created ‘The View’
The original View panel consisted of Walters, Joy Behar, Star Jones, Meredith Vieira, and Debbie Matenopoulos. Over the years, co-hosts including Lisa Ling, Sherri Shepherd, and Elisabeth Hasselbeck joined the fray. Vieira remained the show’s moderator for its first decade before Rosie O’Donnell took over as moderator in its tenth season. Whoopi Goldberg took the reins after O’Donnell and has been in the seat since.
In the early 2010s, rumors of Walters’ retirement from the public eye began to ramp up. For her, she wanted to fade from the spotlight rather than continue to make appearances on TV in various capacities.
“I do not want to appear on another program or climb another mountain,” Walters told the Los Angeles Times in 2013 before retiring. “I want to instead sit on a sunny field and admire the very gifted women — and OK, some men too — who will be taking my place.”
Lisa Ling said Barbara Walters was forced to quit ‘The View’
Lisa Ling joined The View in 1999 and was a part of the show until 2002. After she was let go, Ling went on to become a successful TV journalist.
On May 15, 2014, View co-hosts past and present, as well as a long line of women journalists, appeared on The View to pay their respects to Barbara Walters on what was her last day on the talk show she created.
After Walters’ death at the end of 2022, tributes began pouring in for the late View legend. In a March 2023 interview with The Cut, Lisa Ling shared a tidbit of information from Walters’ last day on The View that paints a very different picture of her departure.
“I’ve never shared this with anyone,” she said. After they went off the air on Walters’ last day, Ling asked her, “‘Barbara, in a couple of months, are you going to be lounging in a hammock in Tahiti?’”
Her response was frank. “She just leaned over and whispered, ‘They’re making me quit.’”
‘The View’ has fired many co-hosts over the years
The View is no stranger to letting people go from the panel when the powers-that-be decide that their time is up. Over the years, a number of View co-hosts have been fired, including Michelle Collins, Nicolle Wallace, Jedediah Bila, and original co-host Debbie Matenopoulos. Other co-hosts, such as Star Jones and Sherri Shepherd, simply didn’t have their contracts renewed while they were in the negotiation process.
Today, The View panel consists of longtime moderator Whoopi Goldberg, OG View co-host Joy Behar, TV journalist Sara Haines, political commentator Ana Navarro, legal eagle Sunny Hostin, and former White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah Griffin.
