Jenny McCarthy’s time on The View was absolutely “miserable,” especially her time working with the show’s creator Barbara Walters.
In an excerpt about McCarthy published this week by Vulture from author Ramin Setoodeh, who penned the upcoming book Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of The View, McCarthy slammed the legendary journalist for being a nightmare to work with.
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“Every day I went home and I was miserable,” McCarthy told Setoodeh of her time on the show in 2013 and 2014. “It really was the most miserable I’ve been on a job in my 25 years of show business.”
She first compared Walters to the abusive mother in the 1981 movie Mommie Dearest, due to the way she was spoken to during an appearance as a guest co-host during a debate about her son’s autism and whether it could be cured.
“I’ve never seen a woman yell like that before until I worked with Barbara Walters,” she said in the excerpt. “One of my heroes just chewed me a new a—hole.”
When she did join the show as a full-time co-host, McCarthy claimed she was asked to talk about pop culture, but targeted by Walters for her lack of political knowledge.
“She was spacing out. She was checking out,” McCarthy said of Walters. “I panicked because I don’t consider myself a political person… Now I had to figure out, ‘Am I coming out as a Republican or a Democrat? Where do I stand on all the social issues and political issues?’”
The journalist also was allegedly controlling about The Masked Singer judge’s appearance.
“Barbara would check out what I was wearing. If she didn’t agree with it, or it didn’t complement her outfit, I had to change,” McCarthy said. “Mind you, she doesn’t look at anyone’s clothes but mine… I was a human Barbie doll.”
One of the more explosive allegations in the excerpt was a story McCarthy told about flushing Walter’s tampon.
“She’s standing in the hallway where the guests are, yelling at me about a tampon. I don’t know. Maybe in her brain, she went, ‘I’m going to the youngest, newest person here, because obviously she has her period and left a tampon floating.’ This is Barbara Walters. I’m not going to yell at her. So finally I said, ‘I’ll take care of it. I’ll take one for the team and I’ll flush it,’” McCarthy said.
Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of The View is scheduled to be released on April 2.
Photo credit: Paul Archuleta / Stringer, Getty
