‘The View’ Co-Host Sunny Hostin Revisits Being ‘Banished to the 3rd Floor’ When She Started on the Show
Sunny Hostin has been a permanent co-host on The View since September 2016. The ABC legal analyst previously shared her experience of signing on for the daytime talk show, and the lack of fanfare she received in comparison to other panelists. In a recent interview, Hostin once again made reference to the differences she noticed that included her dressing room location.
Sunny Hostin addressed recent comments by ‘The View’ alum Meghan McCain
Conservative co-host Meghan McCain left The View in August 2021 and is making headlines with her new memoir “Bad Republican”. Calling the environment of the daytime talk show “toxic”, McCain chronicled her experience on The View as often contentious with staff and fellow panelists. Hostin weighed in on The View alum’s remarks, though she neither confirmed nor denied McCain’s account.
“I can’t claim to understand her because I think she’s very complicated,” Hostin explained. “Her experience is her experience. No one can say that she didn’t experience it in that way because it’s hers. I didn’t see it that way. I didn’t experience it the way she did. But I’m going to defer to her that she experienced it like that.”
Hostin described how McCain had something of an entourage when she first joined The View, which was quite the opposite from her own arrival.
“Meghan came in with a crew,” Hostin told The Cut. “She came in with a PR person, hair and makeup and with a stylist. I was like, ‘Huh?’ I came in and was banished to the third floor, no introduction, I didn’t have anything. It was very different for me.”
‘The View’ star had a distant dressing room
This isn’t the first time Hostin referred to her start on The View. In her 2020 memoir, I Am These Truths: A Memoir of Identity, Justice, and Living Between Worlds, Hostin explained how permanent hosts on the show have dressing rooms on the second floor, conveniently located near the wardrobe and meeting rooms as well as food service. Guest hosts were given dressing rooms on the third floor.
Hostin had served as a guest host numerous times on The View before being named a permanent panelist spot in 2016. There was still plenty of transition on the show with Candace Cameron Bure in the process of leaving and Jedediah Bila also coming in as a sub. Bila was chosen over Hostin to receive the coveted dressing room spot when Bure exited.
“When Candace left for good, Jed was moved downstairs with the main hosts, into Candace’s old dressing room,” Hostin recalled. “Meanwhile, I remained upstairs in no-man’s-land, prepping, as everyone else had breakfast. The producers would sometimes have to come find me.”
The legal analyst had been at the “Hot Topics” table longer than Bila and considered it a personal diss by being kept in the remote location.
“I felt dismissed and devalued,” Hostin wrote. “After my long history with the show, someone so new on the scene was suddenly appearing just as much as me, and now, inexplicably, she had gotten a dressing room on the main floor. In hindsight, I think that I was still having to prove myself, competing with a newcomer after I’d already shown what I could do. It was clear that they felt her voice was more valuable.”
Sunny Hostin took a stand
Hostin also discovered that there were salary differences between herself and her co-hosts, despite juggling two gigs on ABC.
“I had heard that I was the least paid host on the panel,” Hostin told TheGrio in Oct. 2020. “Even though I had the most legal experience and I was a legal correspondent. I had two jobs at the network.”
The View star went to the network to lobby for her rights to be on equal footing with her co-hosts. She details the experience in her book even though ABC had asked her to omit certain parts.
“I needed to take a stand to make the road a little bit easier for the people that were going to come behind me,” she remarked “And it felt freeing.”
