The View has had 22 permanent co-hosts over its 25 seasons, some of whom only last a season or two, while others—like Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar—have stuck with the show for a decade or more. For some hosts, it's an unforgettable experience that helps them go on to pursue bigger and better things. Meredith Vieira left, for instance, to take over Katie Couric's hosting gig on the Today show. But there's at least one former View host who found the whole experience traumatic. Read on to find out which star described her time on the show as "very, very, hard."
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Candace Cameron Bure says she had PTSD from her time on The View.
Eugene Powers / ShutterstockFull House alum Candace Cameron-Bure grew up on TV, along with her famous brother Kirk Cameron. Both Camerons have espoused conservative values, and that actually became a major sticking point for Cameron Bure during her View stint. During an interview on ABC's Behind the Table podcast, Cameron Bure admitted that she felt a lot of pressure to represent conservative viewpoints on the show, People reported.
"The stress and the anxiety—I actually have a pit in my stomach right now," she said. "There was only one type of stress that I've ever felt in my life, that came from that show. And I [have] PTSD, like, I can feel it. It was so difficult, and to manage that emotional stress was very, very hard."
The show regularly liked to include a more conservative voice among the panel—Elisabeth Hasselbeck served that role from 2003 to 2013—but the emphasis on her politics still came as something of a surprise to Cameron Bure. "[I was] just trying to understand and have a general grasp of topics that I didn't want to talk about or didn't care about," she said on the podcast.
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She said Donald Trump's presidential run was the tipping point.
Kathy Hutchins / Shutterstock.com"When I was asked to join the table, the show was supposed to steer towards more evergreen topics and less about politics," Cameron Bure told Behind the Table. "Enter Donald Trump into the presidential race. It changed everything."
Reflecting on the 2016 election, the former co-host said, "The lighter version of the show I thought I was going to work for suddenly became solely about politics ... It was exhausting. Along with that, I was traveling back and forth from Los Angeles to New York every week to be with my family on the weekends. I'm surprised I kept up with my schedule for as long as I did."
Once Trump was elected, Cameron Bure felt that she had to leave. "I did not want to be the punching bag for the next four years in that conservative seat,” she told the podcast. "When I felt like I was going into a show that I didn't have a clear opinion about or it was something that I was legitimately nervous to talk about because I did have an opinion about it, but I knew I was the only one at the table that had my opinion, I would just get sick to my stomach."
Cameron Bure used her stint on Fuller House to leave The View.
Tinseltown / ShutterstockCameron Bure announced she was leaving the show on Dec. 8, 2016 in a tearful monologue, per The Hollywood Reporter. “It wasn’t an easy decision, but before I started The View, I had already had my commitments to Fuller House and my work with the Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies and Mysteries,” she said at the time. “And because of the success of those, my commitments have become even greater with those shows.”
The co-host was given a gracious goodbye by production and her fellow hosts. Showrunner Candi Carter released a public statement letting Bure know that she was always welcome to return. "She will always be a part of The View family and we will gladly welcome her back to the show to support her with all of her endeavors," Carter said, as reported by Extra.
Looking back, Bure said that the show made her into someone who she didn't want to be. “It isn’t who I want to be. It’s not that I couldn’t do it, I just don’t feel like conversations are their healthiest when they’re done that way and you’re forced to make it competitive,” she said on the Behind the Table podcast. “That would make me sick to my stomach as well. So many mornings I would just be crying before the show.”
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Cameron Bure is one of several former View co-hosts who have talked about negative experiences on the show.
Tinseltown / ShutterstockDuring the same Behind the Table episode, Raven-Symoné, who appeared on The View for one season in 2015, said she also struggled with a lot of the politics on the show. "I really did want to be on that show and talk about topics that I'm good at and know about and really succeed in a positive way," she said. "I'm not used to flopping, I'm not used to failing. And I feel like a little bit of a fail because of it. But it wasn't my fault, which made it even worse."
Debbie Matenopoulos, who was among the inaugural batch of hosts of the show, left The View under acrimonious circumstances in 1999. "Let’s just say I wasn’t treated properly,” she wrote in a book proposal that was picked up by the New York Daily News in 1999. “Those people who were tremendously cruel to me know who they are … They don’t like me. They really don’t like me.”
Abby Huntsman left The View in Jan. 2020 after just over a year on the show. In an interview with People earlier this year, she said leaving the show was "the best decision I could have made for my life, for my mental health, for my happiness, for my family."
And Jenny McCarthy, who appeared on the show for a season in 2013, said she had been "miserable" on The View. She told Ladies Who Punch author Ramin Setoodeh that working with Barbara Walters was like being in the film Mommie Dearest. “Imagine a woman like Barbara Walters,” McCarthy told Setoodeh, as printed in Vulture. “It’s her last year and she doesn’t want to leave. Think about that.”
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