“The View” kicked off its first show of the new year by honoring the one andonly Barbara Walters, who died on Friday, Dec. 30, at the age of 93, with anhour that reunited several former “View” co-hosts.
“Tributes are pouring in from around the world to celebrate the life ofBarbara Walters,” co-host Whoopi Goldberg said at the top of the ABC talkerMonday. Goldberg described “The View” creator and former co-host as “thereason why we’re all sitting here,” adding, “really, if not for her I don’tknow where most of us would be.”
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Walters launched “The View” in 1997, with original panel Meredith Vieira, StarJones, Debbie Matenopoulos and comedian Joy Behar. Behar remains the onlyoriginal panelist still on the show, alongside Whoopi Goldberg, Sunny Hostin,Sara Haines, Ana Navarro and Alyssa Farah Griffin.
On Monday, Matenopoulos appeared in studio and Jones and Vieira joined thetable remotely via video and phone to pay tribute to Walters. Other former“View” co-hosts who stopped by throughout the show included Lisa Ling, SherriShepherd and Elisabeth Hasselbeck.
As the youngest member of the original lineup, Matenopoulos recalled herrelationship with Walters as “very mother-daughter.” “She was tough on me, butI appreciated it because I learned everything from her. She single handedlychanged my life. I was a 22-year-old journalism student at NYU. She took ahuge chance on me.”
“The best seat in the house at any social event was next to Barbara Waltersbecause she could tell you everything about anybody in the room,” Jones said,reminiscing alongside Behar, Vieira and Matenopoulos and the current roster of“View” co-hosts . “Half the time, she had either interviewed them, done astory on them, heard a story about them, and she would dish with the best ofthem, let me tell you. Going to lunch with BW, baby, you would get all theinformation.”
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Vieira weighed in on Walters’ playful side, recalling how much she loved todress up each year for “The View’s” Halloween episode here.
“I don’t want to play armchair psychologist here, but in a way, Barbara playeda role every day of her life, the role of being Barbara Walters,” Vieira said.“And she knew all the words used to describe her: icon, trailblazer, legend,that’s a tough reputation to live up to and to protect. So she couldn’t revealother sides of herself, she couldn’t really let loose — except on our show atHalloween. And that year when she dressed up as Marilyn Monroe, she wouldn’tbreak character. She refused! She kept channeling the sexy, flirtatious sideof her that was very much Barbara, but very rarely revealed. And through ‘TheView,’ she had the ability to peel back the layers of what was a verycomplicated, complex woman.”
“She very much defied sexism and defied ageism, she went right into the jawsof the lion there when she had to deal with people like Harry Reasoner,” Beharsaid. “She was not just a friend to us, she was one of a kind and veryimportant to the industry.”
Hostin recalled her first days on the job as co-host at “The View,” and howWalters, who was still co-hosting at the time, helped to validate her opinionsand actions as an interviewer.
“When I started co-hosting, I was changing my questions on my cards,” Hostinsaid. “I don’t know if you ladies remember that, I was changing them andrewriting them, not realizing that maybe that wasn’t appropriate. And she cameover to me, there’s a picture of it, and said, ‘What are you doing?’ I said,’This is not my voice, I’m rewriting my questions, is that OK?’ She said, ‘Irewrite mine,’ and she started helping me. I thought, oh my goodness, thegenerosity of that moment. I was so scared and I was so nervous and shevalidated my opinion. And after that day, she would ask me during the HotTopics meeting, ‘Well, what do you think, Sunny?’ And I was like, ‘BarbaraWalters is asking me what I think, wow.’”
While Haines never got to sit at “The View” table with Walters, she admiredher career from afar. “For someone who gets paid to talk, what she did so wellwas listen,” Haines said, praising Walters’ journalism career and iconic“20/20” interviews. “And when you see what set her apart, her ability tostrike that tone between curiosity, compassion, humanity — when MonicaLewinsky said, ‘I said yes to that interview because I knew she would humanizeme and let people see me for who I was,’ there was something so uniquelypowerful.”
“Im grateful, I’m in my 30s, I always saw women in anchor roles, I always sawfemales on TV in those presences — but it’s because she opened that door,”Alyssa Farah Griffin added. “That didn’t exist before Barbara Walters. Inevery sense of the word, she was a pioneer.”
A trailblazer in the industry, Walters worked for the “Today” show for 12years before joining ABC News in 1976, becoming the first female anchor onevening news. She remained at the network — working for ABC News, joining“20/20” in 1980 and launching “The View” in 1997 — until her retirement in2014. She won a total of 12 Emmy Awards.
“I don’t want to appear on another program or climb another mountain,” shesaid upon leaving “The View” eight years ago. “I want instead to sit on asunny field and admire the very gifted women — and OK, some men, too — whowill be taking my place.”
Over the course of her career, Walters interviewed every US president andfirst lady from the Nixons to the Obamas; she sat down with former PresidentTrump and his wife, Melania Trump, before they entered the White House.
Walter’s final appearance as a co-host on “The View” was in 2014, but sheremained an executive producer of the show.
“Barbara was a true legend, a pioneer not just for women in journalism but forjournalism itself,” Disney CEO Bob Iger said in a statement on Friday. “Shewas a one-of-a-kind reporter who landed many of the most important interviewsof our time, from heads of state to the biggest celebrities and sports icons.I had the pleasure of calling Barbara a colleague for more than three decades,but more importantly, I was able to call her a dear friend. She will be missedby all of us at The Walt Disney Company, and we send our deepest condolencesto her daughter, Jacqueline.”
Watch a clip from Monday’s episode of “The View” below.
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Pamela Anderson in ‘Pamela, alove story’ (Image: Netflix)