With select exceptions, The View is known for occasionally bringing past co-hosts back, sometimes for permanent returns (like Sara Haines in 2020), and sometimes for tumultuous one-offs (like any time Elisabeth Hasselbeck pops back on). That idea is being expanded exponentially for the talk show’s milestone 30th season, which won’t be hitting the 2026 TV schedule, but will take place n 2027. And it sounds like former moderator Rosie O’Donnell is completely game to rejoin the table.
Along with Haines, O’Donnell is one of the three ladies who co-hosted across two different time spans with at least a one-season gap in between. She took over as moderator for Season 10 after Star Jones and Meredith Vieira exited, and then made her own hasty exit to make way for Whoopi Goldberg as moderator. (That stint also coincided with a BTS feud with then-series director Mark Gentile, who also left after the 2006 season.) O’Donnell made her way back to the daytime series in Season 18 after creator Barbara Walters bowed out, but once again only lasted a single season.
Having already hosted her own highly successful, Emmy-winning talk show, Rosie O’Donnell has shared plenty of opinions about why her time on The View didn’t work like her own show did, as well as her heated back-and-forths with Hasselbeck. But it’s Whoopi Goldberg that the stand-up comedian called out while talking out her decision to make a return for Season 30. Talking to Kyle Ridley in a clip shared on Instagram, she said:
They’ve asked me [to return] before. But, when I was there last, I had sort of a tense time with Whoopi….. I admired her, wanted to be on her team. I admire her EGOT status. I have respect for her. And I expected that we would be like Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan passing the ball back and forth and then shooting and then leading the team to victory, but that’s not exactly what happened.
Beyond Walters, O’Donnell’s comeback in 2014 was also to help fill the void left by exiting co-hosts Jenny McCarthy and Sherry Shepherd, and she was joined by a trio of View newbies in Rosie Perez, Raven-Symoné and Nicolle Wallace. For Goldberg, that meant having to get used to four new people around the table, and the League of Their Own vet notes that she was not as instantly compatible with the EGOT winner as she would have hoped.
Hypothesizing about why there would have been any tension between the two, considering they seem to share many of the same beliefs and social stances, O’Donnell shared:
I think maybe she felt encroached upon in some way, and I was never trying to encroach. I was just doing it the way that I knew how to do it. And it didn’t go so well, you know. So I didn’t want it to be awkward and go on there and make it awkward.
It's been twelve years since her most recent episodes as co-host, and while it's not made clear exactly how many times she was invited by producers to appear in that interim, it does seem like enough time has passed for her to think her on-screen chemistry with Whoopi won't automatically be awkward for all involved. Explaining that they worked together on another project in the meantime, O'Donnell said:
But I’ve seen Whoopi in the years past. I did a film that she was in as well, and we’ve gotten past it, and we’re grown as women. And she’s a woman who supports women, as am I. And so I will go on the 30th anniversary next year and be on in whatever way they want me just as a guest.
Often, the best way to bury the hatchet with someone is just to work with them again in a different capacity. And it sounds like teaming up on something that didn't involve discussing headlines about highly political topics was the right move.
Not that anyone should expect O'Donnell to signal a full-time return to the table for daily Hot Topics chats and the like. It sounds like she's only ready to dip her toes in to make sure the conversational waters are comfortable. Seems like a smart move to me, though I do wonder how many other returning former co-hosts will be prepping for drama when the go back.
Hopefully more celebs will be addressing their own plans to return to The View for Season 30 in 2027.
