Barbara Walters Almost Quit The View Over Co-Host Rosie O'Donnell
It's hardly a secret that there's been plenty of drama backstage at "The View" over the years. We've heard of more feuds than we can even count and oh-so-much tension between the co-hosts time and time again. Plenty of the ladies who have sat at the table have spoken out about their experiences on the show. But while there have been falling outs that happen in front of our very eyes, there are also those tense "The View" moments that went down behind the scenes.
Fans of "The View" probably have heard that the late Barbara Walters had a bit of a rocky relationship with Rosie O'Donnell during their time on the show together — and for a while beyond. Walters was a stalwart on the daytime show for a whopping 17 seasons, from its original airing in 1997 until 2014, with O'Donnell joining the show for just one season between 2006 and 2007. The latter only made a brief return to the ABC show in 2014 following Walters' departure, and, well, it sounds like there was a pretty good reason she waited for Walters to leave before making a short-lived comeback as Walters did not want to work with her.
Barbara Walters would have left The View if Rosie O'Donnell was brought back
It sounds like Barbara Walters was no fan of working with Rosie O'Donnell on "The View," and she wasn't afraid to make that fact known. Journalist Ramin Setoodeh went behind the scenes of all the drama in the 2019 book "Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of The View," and claimed that Walters was so against having O'Donnell back that she threatened to leave the show — as would then-producer Bill Geddie — if O'Donnell returned. Ouch. The book claimed that Walters was enjoying lunch with Brian Frons, then president of ABC Daytime, when she told him, "If you re-sign Rosie to this show, Bill and I are going to quit."
O'Donnell recounted her own issues with Walters in 2023, a few months after Walters' death. She explained to The Hollywood Reporter they met years before "The View" and had a mutual friend in common, but fell out majorly at the show over one very divisive individual. "Barbara and I got in a huge fight, and it was about the Donald Trump thing. He published an open letter to me in the [New York] Post. In it, he wrote that she'd called him 'to apologize for my behavior.' I was like, 'Whoa,'" O'Donnell said. As the open letter mentioned Walters, that caused the ladies to get into an argument about it while at work on "The View." That, it's fair to say, didn't go down well.
Rosie O'Donnell and Barbara Walters did make up after their drama
Rosie O'Donnell shared more about the heated exchange between her and Barbara Walters in The Hollywood Reporter, admitting she also said something impolite about Walters' daughter, Jacqueline Guber, that O'Donnell regretted. "She was hurt. And we were live in 20 minutes. Sometimes I go back and find that episode and I watch it, and I can see how tense it was. But I have apologized to her many times, and we got past it and saw each other [again]," O'Donnell said.
Some fans were left wondering then why O'Donnell didn't return to "The View" to pay tribute to Walters after her death — but it turns out she had good reason for skipping the special. "They invited me, but I wasn't able to make it. You know, I didn't want to be in a big group of people. I was worried that I would get upset and [I] didn't want to do that, so, there you go," she said in an Instagram video.
O'Donnell also paid tribute to her late co-star in a touching Instagram video before that, sharing, "We saw a lot of Broadway shows together, and whenever we go backstage, I'd, like, try to help her, you know, over the steps backstage and she would always smack my hand and tell me to leave her alone. She [knew] what she was doing I could tell you that." O'Donnell added, "May everyone remember just what barriers she broke down for women."