Fans Cry Out, “Bring Back Whoopi!” as the New Season of ‘The View’ Is Announced

The 27th season of The View is set to premiere on September 5, 2023. However, a new promotional video has viewers worried that one of the show's regular cast members may not be returning. The 80-second clip features Joy Behar, 80, Sunny Hostin, 54, Ana Navarro, 51, Sara Haines, 45, and Alyssa Farah Griffin, 34, as they each characterize their popular talk show in three words. The ladies are shown throughout the video, but Whoopi Goldberg, the show's 67-year-old 'leading lady,' only makes a brief cameo near the very end. Some distracted viewers may not have even seen the moderator, who presently leads the program four days a week, since she only appears on screen for four seconds.

One fan wrote on Twitter, "Uh ohhh, I don’t see Whoopi." Another person, appearing certain that Goldberg was no longer in the show, stated: "I like The View, but I love Whoopi, she made the show worth watching. The only reason I watch the show. Bring back Whoopi." However, some viewers caught on to the fact that the promo was making light of Goldberg's absence and that the show's lineup was not impacted. After finally catching a glimpse of the celebrity, one fan commented, "Lmao for a second I thought Whoopi wasn’t coming back!" So, there you have it. Indeed, it seems that Goldberg is not planning to leave the show any time soon.

According to reports from 2021, the Sister Act actress has extended her contract on the talk show by four years, which effectively means she's with the show through the summer of 2025. Besides, as per Closer Weekly, Goldberg earns around $8 million each year for her four days of work on the program. Despite a decline in ratings during her two-week ban from the program earlier this year due to inflammatory statements she made about the Holocaust, the EGOT icon is apparently "untouchable" at ABC, wrote the New York Post.

After Goldberg said the Holocaust was "not about race," ABC decided to remove her from The View. Following the same assertion on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that night, she said on the show that Jews and Nazis were both white. Later that night, in response to a significant outcry, she deleted her tweets and apologized for her comments. A source close to the situation mentioned previously to the New York Post that she was "humiliated" by the disciplinary action taken against her by ABC executives after she apologized for the ill-advised remarks. The insider revealed, "She feels ABC executives mishandled this. She followed their playbook. She went on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and then apologized again on The View the next day."

The president of ABC News, Kim Godwin, announced her decision to suspend Goldberg for two weeks, reminding employees that such choices "are never easy, but necessary." Goldberg and her fellow daytime talk show hosts were all upset when they heard the news of her suspension. Ana Navarro said to the Daily Beast, "I love Whoopi Goldberg. I love The View. This was an incredibly unfortunate incident. Whoopi is a lifelong ally to the Jewish community. She is not an anti-Semite, period. I am sad. And I have nothing else to say."