During their first live broadcast back from the holiday hiatus, The View hosts dedicated their first hour to the late Barbara Walters, the show’s creator and a woman who accomplished many “firsts” in journalism. She broke barriers as the first woman to anchor a network evening-news program, ABC’s Evening News, before becoming the co-host of 20/20. Then, 25 years ago, she opened the door for more women in television and journalism by creating The View, a daytime talk show only hosted by women. The show has had 25 co-hosts throughout its run, including the original panel of co-hosts Meredith Vieira, Star Jones, Debbie Matenopoulos, and Joy Behar. On Monday morning’s episode of The View, the show brought back the original and previous panelists to talk about Walters’s impact on their lives and career.
Whoopi Goldberg
“The industry had to respect her,” Goldberg explained on The View, as she led the tributes. “She did not allow them not to respect her. Like all firsts, she’s the first, and there are many of us duplicates. But there will never be another Barbara Walters.”
Debbie Matenopoulos
Matenopoulos was the youngest co-host on The View at the age of 22 and Walters took her under her wing. “She was tough on me, but I appreciated it because I learned everything from her. She single-handedly changed my life. I was a 22-year-old journalism student at NYU. She took a huge chance on me,” Matenopoulos shared in the studio. “It was like taking a masterclass in journalism.”
Star Jones
Star Jones called into the show via video chat to discuss being Walters’s plus-one to events and what she was like outside of the studio, as the “best gossiper.” “The best seat in the house at any social event was next to Barbara Walters because she could tell you everything about everybody in the room,” Jones explained. “Half the time, she had either interviewed them, done a story on them, heard a story about them, and she would dish with the best of them. … We ended up at a dinner one time with Prince Albert and had a whole conversation about ‘The Thong Song.’”
Meredith Vieira
While Meredith Vieira wasn’t able to join in studio due to an illness, she called in to talk about her experience as the first “moderator” of The View. “I found [the show] fun. It was innovating, groundbreaking. I just wanted to be a part of it,” she shared.
Joy Behar
“She very much defied sexism and defied ageism, she went right into the jaws of the lion there when she had to deal with people like Harry Reasoner,” Behar said of Walters’s ferocity when it came to journalism. “She was not just a friend to us, she was one of a kind and very important to the industry.”
Sherri Shepherd and Lisa Ling
Lisa Ling discusses the “surreal” experience of joining The View in 1999 at the age of 25. “I’ve been watching Barbara all of my life and here she was sitting right next to me,” Ling shared. She also remembered an intimate lunch with Walters where she asked Ling about her personal life and she felt very connected to the iconic anchor. “Watching all these clips over the past couple of days of how she made people cry so effortlessly, so easily. And I’m telling you, when she started asking me questions about my mom, I was just wailing.”
Sherri Shepherd also reflected on her relationship with Walters and feeling defensive over her, especially when Ann Coulter visited the show. “I was just mad because … I didn’t like the way she was talking to Barbara. You don’t talk to Barbara like that!” she explained.
Elisabeth Hasselbeck
“She and I had a layered relationship. She was my TV mom, my mentor,” explained Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who co-hosted from 2003 to 2013. “For ten years, I had that privilege of sitting next to Barbara Walters and getting my masters in the school of broadcasting … She gave her guests a chance to express themselves in a safe way.”