She’s back! Whoopi Goldberg made a surprise appearance on the Thursday, March 14, episode of The View after she took a month-long hiatus due to health complications.
Goldberg, 63, shocked her follow cohosts and the audience when she walked onto the stage after Joy Behar introduced the stars of the daytime talk show. “We’re hoping she’ll be back here soon, maybe next week,” Behar, 76, said seconds before the Sister Act star appeared. “We’ll see. Hurry back, Whoopi. And get better!”
Hosts Behar, Meghan McCain, Sunny Hostin, Ana Navarro and Abby Huntsman were “shocked” to see the Oscar winner, as they had no idea she was planning to return so soon. As for the Nobody’s Fool actress’ health status? She’s still recovering.
“So, this is my first foray out … I’m not there yet, I know that,” Goldberg admitted. “But, the only way it’s going to get better is if I begin, so this is my beginning.”
She continued, “I still have a cough and that’s the last thing to go, apparently. But over the next week and a half I will start to be here more often, but I wanted the first foray to be to come see y’all because I really kind of missed y’all.”
The comedian also explained just how serious her illness was. “Double pneumonia will also kill you. They had to pump a lot of stuff out of me,” she told her cohosts. “So, you know, this is a cautionary tale for all of us. You must really take care of yourself because there’s little tiny stuff out there that will kill you that you never think of.”
The EGOT recipient was absent from The View, where she has been a cohost since 2007, since February 6 due to a scary bout with pneumonia that almost proved fatal.
“Hey, yes, it’s me. I am here,” she said in a video message that aired on the ABC morning show on Friday, March 8. “I am up and moving around. Not as fast as I’d like to be, but I am OK. I’m not dead. So here’s what happened: I had pneumonia and I was septic. Pneumonia in both lungs, which mean there was fluid, there was all kinds of stuff going on. And yes, I came very, very close to leaving the Earth. Good news, I didn’t.”
