Next up on The View? It's anybody's guess! As previously reported, both Sherri Shepherd and Jenny McCarthy were fired from the women-centric talk show on Thursday, June 26; Shepherd was a seven-year veteran, while McCarthy had sat on the famed panel for just one season. Following last month's retirement of the View's original host and matriarch Barbara Walters, that leaves just Whoopi Goldberg among the remaining cast members.
"Everything is up in the air," a show insider tells Us Weekly, adding that most of the staff was not present when the firings were announced on Thursday. And while Shepherd's ouster took many by suprise, "it's not a shock that Jenny was let go," the source admits. The 41-year-old joined the show just last year, but the actress-model "restrained herself and didn't say what she really thought," the source says. "She played it too safe."
The Singled Out alum joined the series following the 2013 departures of Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Joy Behar. But the chemistry with Walters, McCarthy, Shepherd and Goldberg "just didn't work. They never found anyone with that same really smart humor like Joy."
For the current sole survivor, meanwhile, "they are figuring out what to do with Whoopi . . . It is still being decided,” says the insider. Over the past several months, ABC has been "auditioning loads of people," the source says, including recent guest hosts Bill Rancic, Fashion Queens star Bevy Smith, E!'s Ross Matthews and Mario Cantone, among others.
The mood among staffers behind-the-scenes is understandably tense. "Everybody is counting on one more season," says the source.
