She remembers! Joy Behar took a brief hiatus from hosting The View after being fired in 2013 — and she hasn’t forgotten what went down.
“I’ve been on this show for 26 years, right?,” Behar, 80, said on the ABC talk show’s Thursday, May 25, episode. “With a small hiatus as we all know — forced.”
Behar has been a cohost of The View since Barbara Walters launched the show in 1997. However, she was temporarily let go in 2013 alongside cohost Elisabeth Hasselback before making a return two years later.
At the time, it was reported that the comedienne left of her own volition.
“You reach a point when you say to yourself, ‘Do I want to keep doing this?’ There are other things on my plate I want to do,” the New York native told Deadline after news of her exit broke in August 2013. “I’ve been writing a play, I’ve been neglecting my standup. I do like talk shows, I’m interested in talking to people.”
ABC, meanwhile, released their own statement at the time, telling the outlet, “Joy Behar has been instrumental in the success of The View from the very beginning. We wish her all the best in this next chapter, and are thrilled that we have her for the remainder of the season.”
Behar later revealed that she was let go by the network — but wasn’t interested in fighting the decision.
“I was glad to be fired,” she told Time in 2022. “I basically was sick of the show at that point for some reason, I don’t even remember why.”
While initially happy about her exit, Behar continued to make guest appearances on the Emmy-winning daytime series until her permanent return in 2015.
“Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in,” the Hall Pass star said in a statement at the time, joking that her husband Steve Janowitz “was getting tired of applauding every time I gave my opinion.”
She continued: “But I’m happy to be back home. And I’m looking forward to sticking my two cents into the hot topics, especially now that Hillary [Clinton] and the Donald [Trump] are in the spotlight.”
Behar’s 2013 exit wasn’t the first time she almost cut ties with The View. [The Ice Age actress revealed that Walters almost fired her in 2006 after she accidentally leaked that Rosie O’Donnell was joining the team as a new cohost. (Walters died in December 2022 at the age of 93.)
“You ever feel like you’re going to have a heart attack?” Behar asked during an episode of The Tonight Show With Jay Leno in September 2013, recalling the phone call she received from the veteran journalist after her mistake.
According to Behar, her boss said: “Hello, Joy? It’s Barbara. And I just want you to know I’m not renewing your contract.” while she allegedly apologized repeatedly, Walters wasn’t having it and replied: “It was a big mistake! I’m not renewing your contract!”
Behar went on to share that she “got in trouble a lot” throughout her tenure on the show, citing one incident where she made a quip about Trump’s hair that resulted in an angry letter from the former president’s team.
“‘Trump is livid about the comment Joy made on air yesterday. He does not wear a wig,'” she read of the letter she received while on The Tonight Show. “‘She can come over to the office and pull it and see for herself that it won’t come off. People over there need to check their facts before running their mouths.'”
