Anyone who has seen the show knows that being on The View isn't a walk in the park. Its hosts frequently get into heated arguments about politics and social topics for all of their viewers to see. And, since the dawn of social media, they're also criticized for those arguments online. Many former hosts of The View have spoken out about just how high-stress the job can be, and one ex-host even says she was told to leave the series by her doctor. According to her, the cardiologist could see evidence of a potential medical issue through their TV screen. Read on to find out more.
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Rosie O'Donnell joined The View in 2006.
s_bukley/ShutterstockRosie O'Donnell certainly made an impression as a host of The View, but she was actually only on the show for a relatively short amount of time. She first joined the series in 2006 and stayed on for one season. Then, in 2014, she rejoined the show, but left before that season was even complete.
In a new interview with The New Yorker, O'Donnell explained that she was asked to join The View after series creator and original co-host Barbara Walters saw her documentary All Aboard! Rosie's Family Cruise.
"I had done a documentary with Sheila Nevins about the [gay-family] cruise that [ex-wife] Kelli [Carpenter] and I did, and Barbara came to see it," O'Donnell explained. "She said [puts on a Barbara Walters accent], 'Rosie, would you ever want to be a panelist on The View?' And I said, 'With you, Barbara, of course I would,' and the rest is history."
O'Donnell says her doctor warned her The View wasn't good for her health.
The View / YouTubeO'Donnell told The New Yorker that the second time she left The View, it was—in part—because her cardiologist suggested it.
"And then I did it again, and I had to leave because it was too hard to do in the times we were in and with the resistance that I got the second time," O'Donnell said of her second run on the talk show. "I don’t know. My heart doctor said, 'I watch you, and they have a closeup of you, and I can see your carotid artery.' And I had a heart attack at fifty, so this doctor was, like, 'Do you think you need this stress? I mean, do you need the money?' I was, like, 'No, I don’t.'"
This was only a couple of years after O'Donnell's 2012 heart attack.
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She was also going through some personal issues at the time.
Debby Wong / ShutterstockWhen O'Donnell left the show, her representative issued a statement that shared details about issues she needed to address in her personal life. At the time, she had recently separated from her wife Michelle Rounds.
"She’s focused on her kids now. This is the right thing for her to do,” O'Donnell's rep told People. “The stress of a daily live talk show is a lot—and the separation is a lot, and you reach a certain point where you have to put health and family first, and she has. She had a wake up call in 2012, a near fatal heart attack, and her doctors told her, ‘You have to take care of yourself, you have five children.’ Reliving her heart attack as she went through the editing process of her [HBO] heart documentary was sobering for her.”
Plus, there was tension with a co-host.
RYAN MCCUNE/Patrick McMullan via Getty ImagesAt the time that O'Donnell departed The View for good in 2015, there were rumors that she was leaving the show because she didn't get along with Whoopi Goldberg. While it sounds like that wasn't the primary reason for her stepping away, O'Donnell has opened up about not getting along with her co-host.
"Whoopi really didn't like me," O'Donnell told Howard Stern in 2020. She said that Goldberg was upset with her from day one, because she threw to commercial when that was supposed to be Goldberg's job. O'Donnell also felt that the Ghost actor was purposely rude to her.
"She was mean to me on live TV," O'Donnell told Stern. "When people say, 'Well, what happened,' I say, 'Go back and watch [the episodes].' It's not like a mystery, watch the way it went down."
