Whoopi Goldberg Isn’t Leaving ‘The View.’ She’s Filming a Netflix Movie
Two weeks of partial absences, a comedy produced by the Obamas' company, and four former co-hosts rotating through her chair.
- No, she is not leaving. Whoopi Goldberg is away from The View for parts of the next two weeks, not for good.
- She is filming Women Like Us, a Netflix comedy from Higher Ground, the Obamas’ production company.
- She still turns up on Mondays. Joy Behar moderates the rest of the week, with four former co-hosts rotating in.
The search says “leaving.” The answer is “filming.” Whoopi Goldberg has been the moderator of The View since 2007, so an empty chair at the Hot Topics table reads as an exit. This one is a shooting schedule.
The show’s executive producer Brian Teta laid it out on Behind the Table, the show’s own podcast, on Sept. 16: she is out for portions of the next two weeks and back after that.
Is Whoopi Goldberg leaving The View?
No. There is no exit announcement, no farewell episode and no replacement moderator hired. What there is, is a movie with a start date.
The confusion is doing what it always does with daytime television: a host missing several days in a row looks like the start of something, and the show is in its 30th season, which makes every absence read as a succession story.
What is she filming?
Women Like Us, a comedy for Netflix. It comes from Higher Ground, the company Barack and Michelle Obama founded in 2018, with Michelle Obama as an executive producer.
Higher Ground is the outfit behind the Oscar-winning documentary American Factory and the Netflix series Waffles + Mochi, so a studio comedy with a daytime anchor in it is a wider swing than its usual shelf.
Who is filling in?
Four former co-hosts rotate through the empty chair: Lisa Ling, Star Jones, Sherri Shepherd and Debbie Matenopoulos. Between them they cover most of the show’s three decades.
Joy Behar takes the moderator’s job while Goldberg is out — an original co-host from the 1997 launch, and the longest-serving person at the table.
The regular panel stays put. Nobody else is going anywhere.
Is she still on Mondays?
Yes. That is the detail that makes the “leaving” version fall apart: a host on the way out does not keep one day a week.
It is also how daytime schedules usually absorb a film shoot. The Monday show sets the week’s agenda, so the moderator holds that one and the production takes the rest.
More in TV & Reality: the full Traitors Season 6 cast, the Dancing With the Stars couples and how the voting actually works. Elsewhere, why Netflix ended Sweet Magnolias.
Thirty seasons in, the show has a structural problem that has nothing to do with Goldberg: it has outlived enough co-hosts that a bench of four former ones is available on short notice. That is a strength for covering two weeks and a question mark for whatever comes after.
— Bruno Monteiro
Sources: Brian Teta on Behind the Table, the show’s official podcast, Sept. 16 episode; the Sept. 16 broadcast on The View’s official channel; Higher Ground credits from the company’s published slate. Reported by Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and TheGrio.
Reported from The View on Youtube.
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