Joy Behar Plans to Retire From ‘The View’ in 2023. After 21 seasons, Joy Behar has set an exit date from “The View.”
Behar, 77, would like to retire as a regular liberal on the ABC daytime talk show after her contract expires in the summer of 2023. She revealed her plans in a new interview for the non-fiction book Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of ‘The View’ by Variety’s Ramin Setoodeh.
“I have a three-year contract,” Behar said in the book. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t leave if I want to, because there’s nothing I can do at the moment.” I don’t see myself staying [longer]. This is! Maybe I’m wrong. If I’m as good in [2022] as I am now, I’ll think about it. But the chances of that happening…” She paused to think. “You know, time moves on.” I am not a child.”
Multiple “The View” sources have confirmed that Behar left the show in 2023.
An ABC spokesman denied that Behar would be leaving. “That’s not true,” a network representative said. Joy was asked what happens at the end of her contract and as she herself made clear in the interview, if she is ‘as great in [2023] as I am now’, she will be in her place in the table.
If Behar goes through with her plan, she will leave “The View” shortly before she turns 80. Creator Barbara Walters left the show in 2014, aged 84.
Behar has been on “The View” longer than any other co-host. She joined the talk show when it launched in 1997 after auditioning for Walters, and faced countless exits and reboots over three decades as the television landscape changed.
In 2013, Behar was fired when ABC executives decided to make The View less political (an idea that now seems laughable). But two years later, in 2015, she returned to the “Hot Topic” chart after ratings plummeted without her, and continues to thrive with her snappy commentary on the latest Trump White House scandals.
Behar took a leave of absence from “The View” on March 13 to self-isolate as a precaution against the coronavirus. While the other co-hosts — Whoopi Goldberg, Meghan McCain and Sunny Hostin — began working remotely, Behar appeared on the show via satellite from the Hamptons, where she lived.
Ladies Who Punch paperback comes out next week from St. Martin’s Press. The book, which became a New York Times bestseller in April 2019, features interviews with most of the show’s main cast, including Walters, Behar, Rosie O’Donnell, Meredith Vieira, Starr Jones, Jenny McCarthy and Sherri Shepherd.
