Barbara WalterslaunchedThe Viewin 1997 following an already decades-long, revered career as a journalist.
She hand-pickedJoy Behar,Star Jones, Debbie Matenopoulos andMeredith Vieirato join her as the initial panel, and addedRosie O’Donnellin 2006 after Jones got the boot.
Lou Rocco/ABC via Getty Images; Heidi Gutman/ABC via Getty Images
So to save the show — and her reputation as a respected, legitimate news anchor —Walterswanted O’Donnell out.
“If you re-sign Rosie to this show, Bill and I are going to quit,” Walters, 89, told ABC Daytime President Brian Frons in 2007 over dinner at Spago in Beverly Hills, according toLadies Who Punch.
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O’Donnell, 57, did not return for the following season, and onlymade a brief comebackin 2014 after Walters left.
The Long Island, New York, native went on to write a memoir, titledCelebrity Detox (The Fame Game), in which she called outWaltersand recommended that the then 77-year-old should retire.
Unhappy with her part in the book, Walters had ABC leak her mention inCelebrity Detoxto theNew York Post, asking the outlet to include a psychologist evaluation of O’Donnell’s mental health when covering her memoir, according toLadies Who Punch.
• For more onThe View,pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on stands Friday
The articlecame out in September 2007 with a psychiatrist calling O’Donnell “full of rage” and suggesting she “dishes out anger mostly to women because of deep-seated abandonment issues over her mother’s death.” The piece also included a statement from Walters, in which she called O’Donnell’s memoir a “sad book, but I prefer to focus on the happier times we had and the happier times we hope to have in the future.”
Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story ofThe View is out April 2.
source: people.com
