‘The View’: Abby Huntsman Reveals Candid Thoughts on Her Exit

Journalist Abby Huntsman called leaving The View one of the best decisions she has ever made in a new interview last week. Huntsman, the daughter of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and a former Fox News anchor, left ABC‘s The View behind in January 2020 and has not looked back. She had other concerns in the past year, including a family-wide COVID-19 scare.

Huntsman, 35, last appeared on The View on Jan. 17, 2020. She planned to go back to Utah, where Jon was running for governor again after serving as President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Russia. Jon lost in the Republican primary to Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox. Although the initial reason why she left The View didn’t pan out, Huntsman told PEOPLE she doesn’t regret the decision.

“I don’t talk much about that time, and I won’t, but the decision that I made was probably the best decision I could have made for my life, for my mental health, for my happiness, for my family,” she told the magazine. Huntsman said the moment she walked out of the studio the last time, she knew this was for the best. “When I walked out those doors for the first time, I could hear the birds chirping in the city, in Central Park, and I looked up in the sky and I thought, ‘This is the best thing I did for myself,’” she said. “Because I can see the world, I can hear the world, I’m more present.”

Huntsman’s departure from The View just happened to be as the coronavirus pandemic was beginning. When she and her husband Jeff left New York City for Utah with their three children, they thought the pandemic would be a “two-week thing,” but it wasn’t. Almost everyone in her immediate family got sick. Two weeks after Jon lost the primary, Jeff was hospitalized with COVID-19. It got so bad that Hunstman seriously wondered if her husband would survive.

“I just remember feeling so helpless and so overwhelmed and so unsure about what was going to happen — was he going to be okay, am I going to be okay, are kids going to have lifelong effects from this virus?” she told PEOPLE. “There was a period, to be totally honest, that I didn’t think I would be able to get through.” Thankfully, her husband and her family recovered.

Huntsman and her family now live in Greenwich, Connecticut. Her next project is a new podcast with friend Lauren Leeds, who is based in Los Angeles. The podcast doesn’t have a title yet, but they hope it will launch in the fall with Dear Media. The podcast will include interviews, which Huntsman missed doing “so much,” adding, “I miss storytelling.”

As for all the gossipy headlines The View generates, Huntsman told PEOPLE that “half of that’s not even true.” In fact, she is still friends with Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, and Sunny Hostin. She is also “thrilled” for Meghan McCain, who recently became a mom too. She said the media focuses on the drama, but ignores the friendships built on the show. “That’s what people don’t write,” she said. “They don’t write about the friendships, they don’t write about us being real people, or any of that.”