NEWSJulie Chen Moonves Iced Out Pal Leah Remini for Almost a Decade After Bitter Feud Unfolded on 'The Talk': 'I Felt Betrayed'
Sept. 19 2023, Published 12:03 p.m. ET
Julie Chen Moonves revealed how she and Leah Remini were able to make amends after their feud erupted while working on The Talk together.
It all began when the actress, 53, complained about her while Chen Moonves, 53, was on vacation.
Julie Chen Moonves moderated 'The Talk' for eight years.
“A couple of my co-hosts, while I was away, went to the network and said, ‘We can’t work with Julie anymore. She’s too uptight. She’s not one of us. If she stays, we go.’ And they ended up leaving and I ended up staying,” the Big Brother host wrote in new audiobook, But First, God, according to Variety. “But what was so hurtful and challenging about this time was that one of the people who left was someone who I became like overnight best friends with after working on The Talk. And that was Leah Remini. We were buddies. We were like going on vacation together, and when she went to the network with this request, I felt betrayed.”
'The Talk' is currently on hiatus due to the writers' strike.
The King of Queens star then left the talk show in 2011 after one season while Chen Moonves stayed on until 2018.
Chen Moonves said she "iced" out Remini for almost a decade until “God entered the picture big time.”
The book author was at a party when she ran into Remini's husband, Angelo Pagan, and she later asked for his wife's number.
Leah Remini left the show in 2011.
“If I didn’t have Jesus in my life at that point, I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to hunt him down and say hello,” Chen Moonves wrote. “I know God says to forgive. So I called her, she answered. We laughed. We buried the hatchet. And today we’re probably closer than ever. Leah did try to apologize to me a year after our friendship blew up, but I was too hard-hearted to accept it. Without faith in my life, I didn’t understand the importance of forgiveness, but the Bible tells us very clearly to forgive one another.”
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As OK! previously reported, Chen Moonves also claimed she was forced to leave the series after eight years. Just days later, her husband, Les Moonves, was ousted from CBS after allegations of sexual misconduct and cultural problems in the company came to light. (Les has denied the allegations.)
Julie Chen Moonves recently spoke about 'The Talk' in her new audiobook.
Julie has stood by her husband, and when she was asked about the scandal during a Good Morning America interview, she made it clear it wasn't something she wanted to discuss further. "That's not what we're here to talk about. But of course. Yeah. I know my husband. You know? I know my husband," she declared.
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Elsewhere in the book, she also divulged how she spoke to her son, Charlie, about what was going on with Les.
"I told him that there were reports that were false about our family, and that, I kept it simple. I said, 'So if you ever hear anything, or you read anything, you come to us first. You know this family. You know who we are. And don't let anyone shake that,'" she recalled.
