If the networks loved passing along the revenge-seeking book of Omarosa, one would think they might enjoy Jenny McCarthy's tales in a new book ripping Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg and the misery of her one-year tenure in 2013-14 on ABC's midday talk show The View. New York magazine's Vulture site has an excerpt from Ramin Setoodeh's book Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of 'The View,' coming out April 2.
First, she recalled Walters screaming at her before a 2007 appearance on her book Louder Than Words about autism and vaccines. "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."
Five years later, when she'd published her memoir Bad Habits: Confessions of a Recovering Catholic, McCarthy claims Walters was entirely different: "She came to my dressing room and was quoting dirty stories from it....She had no recollections I had been there before. She was hugging me. She was loving on me. I was like 'this is the craziest f---ing s--t I've ever experienced in my life.'"
Jenny also claims Walters made her into a "human Barbie doll," unlike the other co-hosts. “Barbara would check out what I was wearing. If she didn’t agree with it, or it didn’t complement her outfit, I had to change.” Jenny estimated that over the next seven months, "she switched 50 outfits as a result of Barbara’s withering gaze, as if they were doing a photo shoot at Vogue instead of a daytime talk show."
She claimed Walters was deteriorating at that time, that "Her memory was cloudy, and she’d been known to make odd outbursts in private conversations." One day she collapsed a la Hillary Clinton:
One day, just as the show ended, she collapsed into the arms of a stage manager. She had to be taken to the greenroom, where they laid her down on a sofa. The staff called the paramedics. But Barbara, concerned that the sight of her on a stretcher would make it into the papers, instructed them to take her to her dressing room. Once inside, she locked the door and wouldn’t let anyone in. “Barbara, are you okay?” they pleaded. She finally came out to be taken to the doctor. The next day, Barbara acted like it was business as usual.
McCarthy said people tried to push her to take opposing political opinions from Whoopi Goldberg. But “Whoopi can knock over anyone in a debate. Her voice is strong not only in meaning but also in sound. I was able to get a point out in three words — like ‘I don’t agree’ — and that’s all I would be able to say. I would be stepped on or interrupted.”
Whoopi didn’t like that Jenny hadn’t deferred to her enough. “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. She had an addiction to controlling all of it and everybody.”
“Every day I went home and I was miserable,” Jenny told Setoodeh. “It really was the most miserable I’ve been on a job in my 25 years of show business."
