Jenny McCarthy’s experience on The View may not have been exactly what she signed up for.
“I was hired to bring pop culture to The View,” McCarthy, 52, claimed in Us Weekly’s exclusive sneak peek of Maria Menounos’ latest “Heal Squad” podcast episode. “They got rid of — at the time — Joy [Behar] and Elisabeth [Hasselbeck]. They wanted to do a whole flip of the show and lighten it up.”
While McCarthy thought she was joining ABC’s long-running daytime talk show to be the “pop culture buzzy girl,” she claimed the powers that be had a sudden change of direction.
McCarthy recalled a moment when she mentioned something about Katy Perry, who Barbara Walters had “just interviewed” for a special. Once the “Fireworks” singer was named, McCarthy claimed her cohost said, “Who’s Katy Perry?”
“It was the first sign that I realized that Barbara was suffering from beginning stages of dementia,” McCarthy told Menounos, 46. “I was like, ‘Oh s—.’ It was literally not even a week into the show. They were like, ‘We’re flipping it. There’s no more pop culture. We’re going back to politics.’ … [Barbara] knew politics but she didn’t know pop culture.”
McCarthy only appeared on The View between 2013 and 2014 before deciding to leave. While it’s unclear when Walters was diagnosed with dementia, she passed away in December 2022 at the age of 93. (Us Weekly has reached out to Walters’ team for comment.)
In a 2014 interview with Howard Stern, McCarthy said the most rewarding part of The View was being able to work with Walters. At the same time, she feared that discussing politics wasn’t a natural fit.
“They want you to fight,” McCarthy claimed on the “Heal Squad” podcast. “They wanted to immediately switch from light and fluffy to fight. I’m not a fighter. … I choose the side of peace in any fight. You want to be right, go ahead with that, and I’m going to have my peace.”
McCarthy now spends her mornings relaxing with husband Donnie Wahlberg. She also remains hard at work judging the Fox reality show The Masked Singer.
Related: Barbara Walters Through the Years: Photos
A television icon. Barbara Walters spent six decades as a hard-hitting journalist — interviewing everyone from controversial political leaders to some of the world’s most high-profile stars — prior to her retirement in 2014. Walters kicked off her career in the 1960s on the Today show, where she went from working behind the scenes as […]
As for The View, McCarthy won’t forget the ups and downs of the job nearly 10 years after leaving.
“When they announced [me joining] The View, it was crazy. Immediately there was a change.org petition to get me off the show,” McCarthy recalled. “They were blowing up The View. ‘How dare you hire her.’ … It was the hardest job in the world because it was not me.”
New episodes of the “Heal Squad” podcast are released weekdays wherever you stream your podcasts.
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