Sherri Shepherd Reveals ‘The View’ Salaries

Sherri Shepherd has done a lot since her exit from The View, including hosting her own talk show on FOX, which is currently in its fourth season. While discussing her time on The View in a recent interview with Vulture, she got real about her salary at the time and how Rosie O’Donnell helped her with contract negotiations when she joined the roundtable in 2007.

At the time, Shepherd was co-hosting alongside Barbara Walters, Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, and Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Of her first year, she recalled: “They didn’t want to give me no money,” adding, “I would have made more in a sitcom, and I got a boy with special needs.”

After having to deal with “the tabloids” calling her “difficult,” Shepherd revealed how O’Donnell, who left The View in 2007, called her and “was like, ‘Let me tell you what everybody’s making.’”

According to Shepherd, O’Donnell told her that she was making $2 million, while Behar and Hasselbeck were on $500,000. “So you need to ask for $2 million,” The Jamie Fox Show alum recalled O’Donnell telling her. “They had offered me $400,000,” the comedian added. “I eventually made a million, too. I always will credit Rosie O’Donnell for being free with that.”

Shepherd said her time on the daytime talk show was a “learning curve.” She said because of her Jehovah’s Witness upbringing, she didn’t have much experience debating people or discussing politics. “Everything that I learned not to do — don’t argue with your elders, don’t debate — was something I had to do every day with Whoopi Goldberg and Barbara Walters right there,” she explained.

Shepherd said Goldberg and Walters were tough on her, revealing how, at the time, “I really thought [Goldberg] didn’t like me. I see now it was just love; she just didn’t want me to go through what she went through.”