- Rosie O’Donnell told Brooke Shields that Whoopi Goldberg originally “didn’t want” to talk about Bill Cosby on The View.
- On the Shields podcast, she said she would never go back to the daytime talk show.
- O’Donnell has said that interacting with Goldberg on The View was the “worst experience I’ve ever had” on live television.
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On Tuesday’s episode of Now What With Brooke Shields, Rosie O’Donnell opened up about her rocky experience hosting The View and the surprise she felt at her relationship with former co-host and comedian Whoopi Goldberg was not as smooth as she had expected.
O’Donnell has made two brief stints on the long-running talk show. She started hosting in 2006 and left in 2007 before returning in 2014 when Goldberg was also a co-host.
“We clashed in a way that shocked me,” O’Donnell said of the Sister Act star after about 31 minutes of the podcast.
(From left) Jenny McCarthy, Barbara Walters, Rosie O’Donnell, Sherri Shepherd and Whoopi Goldberg on season 17 of The View in 2014. Lou Rocco/Getty Images
O’Donnell also told Shields that since she had experience producing her own daytime talk show (“The Rosie O’Donnell Show,” which aired on NBC from 1996 to 2002), she wasn’t used to “none having the power to do something”. Decisions” regarding the content that would be covered on the show.
She said there would be hard news topics she’d like to discuss, and Bill Getty, who was the executive producer of “The View” at the time, would instead want the presenters to discuss “the new fall lipstick shades.”
During her second stint as host on The View, Bill Cosby’s allegations of sexual assault were “a big topic” in the news, O’Donnell said.
“I wanted to talk about Bill Cosby and not Whoopi,” O’Donnell claimed.
Goldberg. Portal/Christian Charisius
Goldberg ended up talking about Cosby on the show.
“I don’t like snap judgments because I’ve made snap judgments about myself, so I’m very, very careful…save your texts, save your nasty comments — I don’t care,” Goldberg said on The View. . on July 7, 2015, according to The Wrap, noting that people in the American justice system were innocent until proven guilty.
By July 14, 2015, CNN reported that Goldberg had revised her opinion of Cosby in an interview with ABC News chief legal analyst Dan Abrams. “If this is going to be tried in the court of public opinion, I have to say that all the information that’s out there points to guilt,” she said.
Sexual assault allegations against Cosby had been leaking for decades, but first picked up steam in 2014 when comedian Hannibal Buress referenced rape allegations against Cosby on a comedy show, according to an ABC News timeline. In December 2015, Cosby was accused of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand, who said Cosby assaulted her in 2004 and first filed a lawsuit against him in 2005. Constand was one of over sixty women to accuse Cosby of similar crimes.
This case ended in court in 2017. After a second trial, Cosby was found guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault in April 2018 and sentenced to three to 10 years in prison in September. His conviction was vacated in 2021 after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that Cosby should not have been charged due to a deal made by a former prosecutor, and Cosby was released from prison.
Goldberg and Cosby 1990. African American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images
O’Donnell and Goldberg had tensions outside of Goldberg’s stance toward Cosby.
According to People, in Ramin Setoodeh’s 2019 book on “The View,” the “A League of Their Own” star said of Setoodeh, “Whoopi Goldberg was as mean to me personally as anyone on TV — while I was sitting there.” Worse than Fox News. The worst experience I have ever had on live TV was interacting with her.
On the Shields podcast, O’Donnell said she would never work on The View again.
Goldberg officials did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.