Hosts of The View aren't known to hold back about their true feelings, and their candor doesn't end when they leave the talk show. Many former hosts have spoken out about their time on the long-running daytime series, including which co-hosts they did and didn't get along with. In a new interview on Watch What Happens Live, Sherri Shepherd, who hosted The View from 2007 to 2014, shared her thoughts on the show's other panelists. According to her, she gets along with all of them except one—and that one person spoke out after hearing what Shepherd had to say. Read on to find out who Shepherd called out and who she responded.
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Shepherd said there's one host she doesn't talk to.
During her Watch What Happens Live appearance on Sunday, Sept. 11, Shepherd was asked which hosts of The View she's closest with.
"Everybody. We’re all family," Shepherd said. "I was with Joy [Behar] in the Hamptons. I just called Whoopi [Goldberg] the other day when she was in Italy, so we’re talking tonight."
She added, "Just everybody—not Meghan [McCain]—but everybody else I'm so close to." McCain was on the show from 2017 to 2021, so her tenure did not overlap with Shepherd's, but they've shared some tense interactions all the same.
McCain thinks Shepherd was looking for attention.
McCain responded to Shepherd's remarks during an interview on Watch What Happens Live host Andy Cohen's SiriusXM show on Sept. 13.
"I don’t know Sherri Shepherd. She was on the show like 15 years before me, when I was in high school, so I don’t know why anyone is under the impression that we’re close friends," McCain said. (She actually graduated from college the year Shepherd started her tenure on The View.) "I think she has a new show coming out," the TV personality continued. “She’s looking for publicity. A really easy way to get publicity is to try and fight with me.”
Shepherd's new talk show, Sherri, premiered Monday, Sept. 12.
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McCain called what Shepherd said "mean" and "nasty."
Kathy Hutchins / Shutterstock.comIn the same interview, McCain continued, "The thing that makes me the most sad about it is The View is really hard and I think anyone who’s done it knows how hard it is. There’s also like this toxic mean girl reputation that’s not only with The View, but in daytime talk in general, and I wish we would all just stop."
She also noted that Shepherd had made comments about her in the past and claimed she understood her intentions.
"I don’t know why anyone would be under the impression I’m close friends with her. Obviously, we are not and I’m not up in my feelings about it," McCain said. "I never think about her at all. It just seems like a really mean, nasty thing to do and a very strange way to start your new talk show that’s supposed to be light and positive for women to, like, trash someone. And I know what she’s doing. I mean, we’re all smart. She’s throwing shade and making it a point to say, like, ‘All the alumni at The View get along and braid each other’s hair and go to sleepovers except Meghan. The ultimate mean girl, bad girl.’”
McCain and Shepherd have publicly disagreed in the past.
Shepherd and McCain had another back-and-forth back in 2018, and it was also after Shepherd appeared on Watch What Happens Live. Shepherd was asked how she thought McCain was doing on The View, and she responded, "She just has to evolve. She has to get used to sitting there at that table. And I think she has to not take the whole Republican world on her shoulders. It’s too much to take that whole world. You’re not the Republican voice. It makes you stress. It makes you tense. So, I think, just being able to lighten up a little.”
McCain was upset by Shepherd's words and tweeted in response, "Sad to hear this from @SherriEShepherd. The Trump years are incredibly intense and tumultuous times. I believe all women today should be taking the world we live in and our place in it very seriously.” Shepherd tweeted back and wrote that her comments were intended to be "constructive." She added, "We have talked at length privately & I’ve been nothing but supportive of you & everyone who has co-hosted @TheView. If I came across as not being supportive of you, that wasn’t my intent.”
Shepherd thought she and McCain could have made up on the show.
Theo Wargo/Getty Images Lifetime TelevisionShepherd commented on her 2018 exchange with McCain during a 2019 interview with Yahoo!.
"I don’t know necessarily that we made up,” the TV host said. “We had a difference of opinion. We probably could have worked it out if I was on The View— it would have been something to talk about. We’re two grown women, and everyone has a difference of opinion. We’re not going to die; the day goes on, and we do our thing.”
