Jenny McCarthy is reflecting on her time on “The View.”
The actress, 52, got candid on co-hosting the daytime talk show from 2013 to 2014.
“I was hired to bring pop culture to ‘The View,’” McCarthy told Maria Menounos on her “Heal Squad” upcoming podcast episode, per Us Weekly. “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.”
Despite joining the show under the impression of being a “pop culture buzzy girl,” the model alleged the show’s direction changed shortly after.
McCarthy recalled a moment in particular with her co-host Barbara Walters — who was on “The View” from 1997 until 2014.
The “Jenny” alum made a comment about Katy Perry, who Walters had “just interviewed” for a special. But during the conversation, when McCarthy brought up the singer, 40, she claimed the late journalist replied, “Who’s Katy Perry?”
“It was the first sign that I realized that Barbara was suffering from beginning stages of dementia,” McCarthy confessed to Menounos, 46. “I was like, ‘Oh s–t.’ 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.”
There were reports Walters suffered from dementia in her later years, but her diagnosis was never confirmed.
Looking back on her time on the show, the “Masked Singer” host recalled why she decided to leave.
“They want you to fight,” McCarthy claimed while on the 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.”
Ten years after leaving the show, the “Santa Baby” actress won’t forget the roller-coaster ride that ensued.
“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.”
Walters, meanwhile, announced she was retiring from her co-hosting role on “The View” after spearheading the show in 1997. Walters still worked on her “Most Fascinating People” special in 2014 and 2015.
The famed anchor died in 2022 at the age of 93. However, she hadn’t been seen in public since 2016.
In 2014, she told Vanity Fair in one of her last interviews: “Do I see myself as a feminist idol? No. I don’t see myself as anything. I do not see myself as a trailblazer. I don’t think about that. I get up, and I do my day, and I do my work, and I see friends. But I don’t sit and think about how I see myself, or what my legacy is.”
