Barbara Walters made a million dollar offer for Kathy Griffin to join “The View,” but the comedienne says it wasn’t enough money for her to “uproot” her life.
In a video posted to her YouTube channel this week, the 64-year-old funnywoman shared the story of being offered a spot on the daytime chatfest in the mid-2000s.
“The offer was for $1.4 [million] and I am just going to be honest, I had to turn it down because, at the time, between doing ‘My Life on the D-List’ and touring, I was making about $10 [million] a year,” she revealed.
“I had to turn down ‘The View’ because I would have had to uproot my whole life,” she said, adding she was also caring for her elderly parents at the time.
Walters, who created “The View” in 1997, ruled to the roots on the popular panel show until her retirement in 2014. She died in 2022 at age 93.
While Griffin guest hosted the New York City-based talk show 27 times, she said that Walters was not happy about her turning down the gig.
“I remember when they offered me the job, Barbara Walters said backstage one time before we were about to go out and do the live show, ‘They say we have chemistry, I don’t really see it but they say we do,’” Griffin recalled. “And I loved that. I said, ‘Of course we do Barbara, people love when I give you s–t.’ And then she just rolled her eyes.”
Griffin went on to assure Walters that her reason for declining the job wasn’t because she thought she was too famous.
“It’s not that I think I’m too good for this show, it’s the opposite: this show is too good for me,” she told Walters. “[But] I’m going to be honest, this is how much money I made last year … and between moving costs and I’m so entwined with my mom and dad. I have a house in Los Angeles, and it just isn’t feasible for me to do.’”
“She did not like that one bit,” Griffin recalled. “She didn’t care. They didn’t up their offer by a penny, I think I might have said something like, ‘Can you meet me halfway? And they didn’t.’ But there’s the real story.”
