The View's Sara Haines Admits She Hit 'Rock Bottom' After Daytime Show Cancelation: 'I Was Mourning the Dream I’d Always Had'
Sara Haines is opening up about how she struggled with her mental health after the cancelation of her daytime talk show with Michael Strahan and Keke Palmer, Strahan, Sara and Keke.
The View co-host, 46, spoke about the ups and downs of her career with executive producer Brian Teta on the Monday, January 29, episode of the “Behind the Table” podcast.
Haines admitted her two years away from The View and her show ending amid the global pandemic was a low point.
“I was in a dark place and when you’re depressed, you can’t distinguish reality from your created narratives,” she shared.
“Working with Michael Strahan and eventually Keke Palmer, I miss them all the time,” she confessed. “The laughter, the joy, even the staff. But the show didn’t really have a chance out the gates. We fumbled, all of us, through the whole thing.”
She explained that her pregnancy with son Caleb, 4, added to her struggle.
"Meanwhile, I got through finding out I’m pregnant unexpectedly and really dropping into a depression, having major postpartum depression as I tried to race back and save a drowning ship, which was our show, six weeks after having a baby,” she explained.
Haines said she “was a wreck” and “really shocked” at the program's cancelation, especially because she felt it never reached its “potential.”
"I was mourning. It was the dream I’d always had," she stated. "Out of the gates, it almost never was that but I was so determined not to fail and not to let go, that I was being dragged behind a car, metaphorically."
Haines began to tear up as she continued to think back on the difficult days.
Want OK! each day? Sign up here!
"I so vividly remember how invisible I felt ... [and how] what was playing out in front of me and some of the storylines [in the press] weren’t what was happening [behind the scenes]," she told Teta.
"My friends that did my hair and makeup, they remember vividly, I don’t remember many days where I wasn’t crying in my dressing room," she recounted. "It was a rough time and again, no shade to any of the people. I worked with some fun, amazing people and we had a lot of fun."
However, Haines got a second chance when she was asked to return to The View. She joked she was "so grateful to be called [back] because you don’t get two chances unless you’re Joy Behar."
Despite this good news, Haines said she was still “a shell of myself.”
“I was so tense that day that I didn’t know if I’d remember how to do my job,” she shared. “I had become really invisible in those two years in my own mind, through the depressions and stuff. I couldn’t have even told you what my talent was. I didn’t even know how to do what I had been paid to do for years."
Although this was a hard period for the blonde beauty, she noted the strengths she’s taken away from the experience.
Never miss a story — sign up for the OK! newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what OK! has to offer. It’s gossip too good to wait for!
“All of that and the skills it brought with me because having hit that dark place myself, I almost came back with a little fearlessness,” she added. “I think a lot of that came from hitting kind of a rock bottom for myself professionally.”