Better off? Brooke Shields made headlines when she revealed she was passed up for The View in favor of Jenny McCarthy — but the Masked Singer judge would beg to differ.
When McCarthy recently joined Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, a caller asked her about the statement Shields made during her own recent appearance on host Andy Cohen’s Bravo show. However, the former Playboy model joked that not being cast was the Shields’ gain.
“I saw it and I didn’t think it was snotty,” McCarthy, 46, said of Shields, 54, on Tuesday, October 1. “I’m friends with her, I love her, and I think she knows deep inside that I took one for the team, because let’s just face it — that was hell. So you’re welcome, Brooke!”
Cohen, 51, then asked McCarthy a fan’s question regarding whether there was “anything” she regretted “divulging” about the ABC talk show in the tell-all book, Ladies Who Punch, by Variety’s New York Bureau Chief Ramin Setoodeh.
McCarthy initially replied, “Oh, God no! Nothing,” before admitting that the “only thing” she regretted was how there was “kind of slant a little bit more towards Barbara [Walters].”
During Shields’ September 26 appearance on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, the Blue Lagoon actress explained that she “went through a week of being on the show” during her tryout period. She additionally noted that she “did all my homework” and took “everything very seriously.” However, Shields revealed that she was later informed by a producer that The View planned to go in another direction by hiring McCarthy.
“They called me one day. I was directing Chicago at the Hollywood Bowl and I’m in the parking lot and I get a call from the producer,” she recalled. “He says, ‘We’ve decided to go with Jenny McCarthy.’ And I was like, ‘OK.’ I mean, she’s a friend, but you want one or the other.”
Shields added that she believed “they were going for something different.”
McCarthy replaced Elisabeth Hasselbeck in 2013. The following year, she exited the long-running daytime series alongside fellow cohost Sherri Shepherd.
In Setoodeh’s tell-all book, McCarthy equated her experience on The View to that of a horror movie. “You know the movie Mommie Dearest?” McCarthy said in the book. “I remember as a child watching that movie and going, ‘Holy cow!’ I’ve never seen a woman yell like that before until I worked with Barbara Walters.”
She continued by comparing the show’s panel to Survivor, adding: “There was a war between Barbara and Whoopi [Goldberg] about Barbara wanting to moderate. This is one of the reasons I decided not to ally with Whoopi. It broke my heart when Barbara would shuffle to Whoopi and say, ‘Can I moderate please?’ And Whoopi would say no.”
Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen airs Sunday to Thursdays at 11 p.m. ET.
