A new tell-all about “The View” hasn’t even been published yet, and has already yielded several scandalous stories, including claims that former moderator Barbara Walters was an egomaniacal control freak who undermined her co-stars, and that Rosie O’Donnell had a crush on co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck.
The latest tidbit to leak out prior to the publication of Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of “The View” concerns a claim that the book’s author, Ramin Setoodeh, made during his Wednesday night appearance on Andy Cohen’s “Watch What Happens Live”.
“Star Jones said as she was being fired in 2006, both Barbara Walters and Joy Behar were leaking stories about her gastric bypass to the New York Post to ruin her reputation,” Setoodeh told Cohen, whose jaw literally dropped.
“Then,” he continued, “when she left and surprised everyone… [Jones] used Judy Smith, who was the inspiration for Olivia Pope on ‘Scandal’, to orchestrate her entire exit, where she just quit on live television.”
Following Setoodeh’s bombshell, Jones issued a response.
“My time at The View was one of the great opportunities of my lifetime,” she said in a statement to E! News.
“Of course there were conflicts over the years, however I will forever consider Barbara Walters (along with my dear friend, the late Johnny Cochran) to be one of my two most influential mentors,” the statement continued. “The opportunity to sit beside her for so many years was a ‘master class’ in many aspects of my personal and professional life that I relish and am eternally grateful for.”
