Abby Huntsman exited “The View” last year after less than two years, and in a recent appearance on the show’s “Behind the Table” podcast she discussed why she felt she wasn’t a good fit with “The View”.
According to Huntsman, the election of Donald Trump led the show to focus on “extremes.”
“Everything was about a soundbite and everything was, ‘Who could say the most bombastic thing in the moment?’ and that’s not me,” she explained, via People. “And so, you know, it’s funny I actually think I would have been perfect on ‘The View’ in 1998. I would have been great. I would have fit in because you know what, at that point, the show was more about the women and their lives and why they were different.”
READ MORE: Abby Huntsman Reveals She Left ‘The View’ Because Of ‘Toxic Culture’
In fact, Huntsman said she was insistent that she be allowed to be herself, although that didn’t end up working out
“I said, ‘I’m only saying yes if you let me just be Abby, I’m not coming on to speak for a political party, Yes, I was raised in a more conservative family and I am conservative on a number of things, but I’m also not conservative on everything. Welcome to the world. Not everyone fits in a box,” said Huntsman, whose father is former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman Jr.
“[The producers] said ‘Absolutely, you’re gonna come in as Abby.’ But very quickly, I realized that there was that expectation, and you have to fit in that box. And not only that, you need to make waves and headlines, and the only way to do that is to be more bombastic, to say things that were out there and sometimes a bit crazy,” she continued.
READ MORE: Abby Huntsman Reveals The Real Reason She Left ‘The View’
“I did feel trapped sometimes, because I felt like just to be me wasn’t what the executives at the time always wanted,” she said. “And I was not rewarded for being me — I was not rewarded for not being so out there. That was difficult because I went into news to be authentic, to be myself and to be truthful about all that and to give the viewers what I actually felt about things. So that was a really tough thing to realize pretty early on when I got there.”
