The View is keeping its familiar table intact, with Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sara Haines, Ana Navarro, Sunny Hostin and Alyssa Farrah Griffin all set to return for the show’s next season.
ABC’s confirmed roster comes after weeks of chatter suggesting that Rosie O’Donnell and Karoline Leavitt could be contenders for a seat on the daytime talk show.
The network put the speculation to rest on Thursday, unveiling a new teaser for The View’s landmark 30th season that featured the current panel unchanged.
The promo opens with a nostalgic nod to the show’s debut era and the late Barbara Walters, before Haines is heard reflecting on the milestone: “30 years. Can you believe it?”
Her fellow co-hosts then join in to mark the major anniversary, building anticipation ahead of The View’s September 8 premiere date.
Still, behind the scenes, producers are reportedly interested in bringing outgoing White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt onto the long-running ABC panel show, two sources tell Our News Outlet.
Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sara Haines, Ana Navarro, Sunny Hostin and Alyssa Farrah Griffin are all returning to co-host The View for season 30
Leavitt is understood to be weighing the possibility, with the idea said to have drawn strong encouragement from President Donald Trump and others inside the White House.
The 29-year-old made the shock announcement earlier this month that she would be leaving her plum job at the end of August to spend more time with her newborn daughter Viviana and son Nicholas, two.
Thursday is Leavitt’s last day as press secretary.
The View wants to host Leavitt as a guest soon after she leaves the White House as a bit of a test run, one source said, but producers are serious about adding her to the all-female daytime lineup as a permanent fixture.
A second source told Our News Outlet that official talks have not yet begun, but that ABC representatives have made it very clear to people close to Leavitt that they want her.
Leavitt declined to comment when asked by Our News Outlet.
ABC did not comment either, but a source familiar with the program confirmed The View has extended an invitation to Leavitt to appear as a guest.
Discussions about future media positions while still in the White House are delicate.
Legally, government officials cannot negotiate private sector job opportunities while still in office.
The View’s current panel of hosts have personally criticized Leavitt’s performance as press secretary.
Goldberg memorably raged that Leavitt’s comments condemning ‘wokeness’ in the media ‘really p***ed me off.’
Behar once argued that Leavitt only got her job because of her looks.
The lineup was confirmed after much speculation that Rosie O’Donnell and Karoline Leavitt were in the running to join the cast
In the new teaser, Haines is heard saying, ’30 years. Can you believe it?’ The five other panellists chime in to celebrate the milestone season too ahead of its September 8 air date
‘I think that she’s probably been put in there because according to Donald Trump, she’s a ten,’ Behar said.
And after Leavitt said that Gen Z and younger Americans had been raised with ‘silver spoons in their mouths,’ Hostin fired back, calling the comments ‘rich’ coming from a woman married to a real estate multimillionaire decades her senior. Leavitt’s husband Nicholas Riccio is 60.
Leavitt wasn’t the only one rumored to be joining the lineup. Rosie O’Donnell announced this month that she will return to the show for the upcoming 30th anniversary special.
O’Donnell, 64, served as a host of the daytime program twice, first from 2006 to 2007 and then from 2014 to 2015, and left each time after a single season.
‘I will go on the 30th anniversary next year and be on in whatever way they want me, just as a guest,’ she shared on the podcast The Tangle.
‘They’re bringing back all the hosts, I think, for the 30th season,’ she said. ‘And I’m pretty proud of that show, what it’s become and how it really speaks to the people and to politics, and that was not the case when I first joined.’
In the podcast interview, O’Donnell confessed that she ‘had a sort of a tense time with Whoopi,’ while referring to Goldberg as ‘somebody I admire.’
According to O’Donnell, she had ‘expected that we would be like Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan, passing the ball back and forth and then shooting and leading the team to victory. But that’s not exactly what happened.’
While she isn’t joining The View’s host panel, a source confirmed that the show has extended an invitation to Leavitt to appear as a guest; seen with Trump on August 21
The View’s current panel of hosts have personally criticized Leavitt’s performance as press secretary
In an attempt to trace the source of her bad blood with Goldberg, O’Donnell mused that ‘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.’
Goldberg allegedly took against O’Donnell when the latter ‘made the mistake of throwing to a commercial when she was still talking,’ O’Donnell said.
O’Donnell took over Jimmy Kimmel Live! this month as part of a rotating stable of guest hosts while the show’s star enjoys a summer holiday.
Her reentry to American television comes after she underwent a facelift in January that hit the headlines for being scarcely perceptible.
