EXCLUSIVE'The View' Hosts Bail After Offscreen Drama As Whoopi Goes Live With Just Sara Haines
Jan. 2 2021, Updated 6:48 p.m. ET
The View kicked off with a little less 'Joy' on Thursday.
The top-rated ABC daytime show got off to a bizarre start on November 19, as hosts Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin were nowhere to be seen at the top of the show. Instead, it was just Whoopi Goldberg and Sara Haines who appeared onscreen, welcoming guests and immediately noting the strange situation.
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"Well hello, and welcome to a very unusual View," said Goldberg. "Apparently there are just two of us here today. It's the Sara and Whoopi show until some else checks in."
Goldberg then tossed things over to her co-host for the morning. The lack of hosts was all the more jarring since the show is still airing socially-distanced episodes, meaning that both women were broadcasting from their home and not together in the studio. "And then there were two," joked Haines.
There was a brief pause between the ladies until Goldberg replied: "That's it. So shall we just hit it until someone comes through?"
In an odd turn of events, the show kicked off by taking aim at South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, who is a personal favorite of View host Meghan McCain. That love is not shared by McCain's co-hosts, who like many Americans have become increasingly disgusted with governor Noem as she remains committed to spreading the debunked and deadly dogma coming out of the White House regarding coronavirus.
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Many viewers would no doubt think that a heated and terse exchange between McCain and the ladies of The View just before air precipitated the two-host start to the show, but McCain is still off on maternity leave.
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It was during this segment that Hostin finally appeared, explaining that she had been suffering technical difficulties in the moments before the show went live. No further explanation was given, and this was the first time in months that one of the hosts had suffered a technical glitch and missed the start of the program.
It was another 10 minutes however until Behar joined the ladies. And from the moment she appeared on screen, the consummate pro seemed to be off her game. Behar was clearly out of sorts. Her deliveries were wooden and she could be seen struggling to read questions from the prompter. Behar, wearing mismatched earrings, eventually got into a groove, and by the end of the episode had largely returned to her normal self.
OK! reached out to a rep for the show, who said: "We have to give kudos to our outstanding production team who didn’t miss a beat when Joy’s and Sunny’s systems needed to be rebooted. The show must go on and Whoopi and Sara got the show started with Sunny and Joy soon joining once they were back up and running."
That rep also said there were no plans for a fifth host to appear on the show, and that the ladies were only filming one episode on Thursday as opposed to the normal two.
