'The View' Star Joy Behar Makes a Hilarious Joke About Barbara Walters’ Open-Mouth ‘Suggestive’ Smile

With her trademark open-mouth smile, renowned journalist Barbara Walters won over the nation's hearts and minds. However, The View co-host Joy Behar claims that the expression actually came from a rather unexpected place.

On the October 3 episode of the ABC talk show, Behar welcomed Geri Halliwell, a former member of the Spice Girls, who revealed that Walters' iconic smile “stayed” with her, per PageSix. “She did it every time she took a photograph. It has to have the mouth open,” the 80-year-old Behar said of her late colleague’s grin before joking, “Well, those are from her porn days.”

“Oh my God,” co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin exclaimed in disbelief at Behar's remark. Sarah Haines advised them to “move on” to another issue despite Behar's assurances that viewers understand that the remark was a joke.

Through Season 17 in 2014, Walters, who co-founded The View with producer Bill Geddie in 1997, served as a co-host. At the age of 93, the renowned broadcaster passed away in December 2022. Along with Walters, Meredith Vieira, Star Jones, and Debbie Matenopoulos, Behar was also a founding member of The View. She stayed in that position until Season 16, at which point she left the show. Behar finally made her way back onto the program at the beginning of Season 19 in 2015.

Behar revealed that Walters scolded her badly once after she accidentally revealed that Rosie O'Donnell was joining the cast. However, the women eventually put their differences aside and became very close. Behar told Good Morning America shortly after Walters’ death, "She could have a laugh, have fun, told a good dirty joke, you know she was a lot of fun," Behar said.

"I went to her house a lot of times for dinner, she always had an array of the brilliant people of our time at the table, and she would always include me and my husband as if we were part of that particular group of people, which we were not," Behar continued. "We were not friends with them, we were friends with her. She was always very cordial and lovely to me." 

Before Walters, who met Behar after seeing one of her comedy performances, the feisty Behar never imagined she'd be a part of a daytime talk show. "I took the job at a time when my career could have gone in the direction of acting and the sitcom world because I was doing a lot of years of standup and there are certain ways that you can go from that and a talk show came along and I said, ‘Daytime talk show? I don’t know about that, it doesn’t seem to be my cup of tea,’" Behar said. "This was different and it had Barbara at the helm, and that’s when I decided I’d take the job because if she was in charge of it, it would be a smart show."