An alarming incident backstage at The View took “Hot Topics” to a whole new level.
After walking out to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” on the Wednesday, April 10, episode, moderator Whoopi Goldberg explained the song choice had very significant meaning for the daytime panel.
Goldberg, 68, said that a fire at the Tamron Hall Show studios next door forced the building to evacuate as The View was preparing to go live.
“We do not know who started it,” she said. “We don’t know what started it.”
While Goldberg and cohosts Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin and Alyssa Farah Griffin were forced to leave the building, cohost Ana Navarro had a different experience while she was still en route to The View’s ABC Studios in New York City.
“I was on my way from the airport,” Navarro, 52, said. “It was [time for] our ‘Hot Topics’ meeting, so I pressed the Zoom link thinking I would find all of you on the Zoom. It was dark, empty, an alarm and flashing lights. I thought, ‘Holy hell.’”
Farah Griffin, 34, joked the experience made her realize that The View producer Brian Teta wasn’t exactly high on her list of things to save in an emergency.
“It really made me understand my priorities,” she said. “Because once I saw that all the hosts were fine, I was like, ‘Where’s my glam team?’ Like, leave Brian but as long as hair and makeup is safe.”
Behar, 81, concurred, saying, “It’s really dangerous to see us on the street without hair and makeup.”
The commotion threw Hostin, 55, into a tizzy as she was desperately trying to choose what to bring with her.
“I left my purse in my dressing room,” she said. “But I grabbed my phone.”
Goldberg understood Hostin’s philosophy, telling her, “When that happens, as you’re evacuating, you snatch up your phone. Because that’s your ID!”
While details about the fire remained scarce, Behar, 81, revealed it started in Tamron Hall’s kitchen.
“It was her kitchen,” Goldberg confirmed. “But that doesn’t mean it was her being in there.”
When Hostin pondered what could have been cooking, Goldberg offered up an interesting theory. “Maybe they were cooking each other,” Goldberg said. “I don’t know!’
Hall, 53, was able to provide a bit more context as she opened her own show on Wednesday without the presence of a studio audience, blaming “a grease fire in our kitchen.”
“We were in place preparing for our live show today,” Hall explained. “The audience was in the holding area of the show preparing to come out here to cheer and have a phenomenal show today.”
Hall said “everyone was safe” after the building was fully evacuated.
“To all of the firefighters who arrived on the scene, thank you so much,” Hall continued. “To our audience who remained calm and were excited, many of them flying in from around the country to see the show, thank you so much. And thank you to our team.”
Due to the circumstances, Hall then introduced a replay of the Monday, April 8 episode of her show.
