Jenny McCarthy Calls Her Time on The View "the Most Miserable I’ve Been on a Job in My 25 Years of Show Business"

In 2013, Jenny McCarthy was faced with two exciting business prospects. The actress had been offered  the chance to host her own talk show on CBS, or to join the women of The View as a panelist. She chose the latter. Any regrets? Yeah, a few. 

McCarthy came clean about her time on the daytime talkshow for an upcoming book called Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of “The View." In case the book's title doesn't give it away, the women didn't exactly braid each other's hair backstage, and McCarthy says that things were particularly tough between her and The View's legendary founder, Barbara Walters. 

When McCarthy joined the show, Walters was on her way out. "Imagine a woman like Barbara Walters,” McCarthy said. “It’s her last year and she doesn’t want to leave. Think about that. And I’m the new bitch there.”

She also said: "You know the movie Mommie Dearest?” I remember as a child watching that movie and going, ‘Holy cow!’ ... I’ve never seen a woman yell like that before until I worked with Barbara Walters."

According to McCarthy, Walters picked on her for everything to her wardrobe decisions to... a tampon floating in the backstage toilet? In one particularly odd anecdote, McCarthy shared: "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."

There were other issues that made the experience, according to McCarthy, "the most miserable I’ve been on a job in my 25 years of show business." When she initially signed on for the show, McCarthy was expecting to cover lighthearted pop-culture topics, but the conversations started to veer more toward politics. 

"I panicked because I don’t consider myself a political person,” McCarthy shared. “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? I was going to work crying. I couldn’t be myself,” she says. “My fans were telling me, ‘Where’s Jenny? They aren’t letting you be you.’"  

When McCarthy appeared on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen in 2018, she dished more about her time on the daytime talk show — and bonded with Andy over being yelled at by Walters. Keep scrolling to see the clip.

After Show: Was Jenny McCarthy Asked to ‘Act Republican’ on ‘The View’?