Meredith Vieira is one of the five women who launched The View back in 1997, and the show would not have gone on to run for 25 seasons and counting if not for the success of those early years. She remained at the show for nine seasons before departing, and although she has since returned as a guest host, her recent comments about The View indicate that she’s probably not angling to get her co-hosting job back.
The reporter-turned-television personality appeared on Daily Pop to discuss her career, and the conversation naturally shifted to her time on The View. When Daily Pop co-host Justin Sylvester noted wondered if Meredith Vieira would ever want her job back in the more contentious era of the show, she responded:
There’s a time for everything, I like to say, and I kind of did my time. Oh, that sounds like a prison term, actually, but I did nine years and I loved it. And the show has evolved. It’s a different show, and I think it’s fantastic.
While Meredith Vieira said that she “loved” her time on The View, saying that she did her time and then acknowledging that doing her time sounds like a prison sentence suggests that she’s perfectly fine not returning as a full-time host. All in all, her response sounded like a very diplomatic and respectful way to say a decisive “no.”
It wasn’t that long ago that she did return to her former stomping grounds at the talk show, although it wasn’t because she was testing the waters to potentially come back full time. Along with fellow OG favorites Star Jones and Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Vieira stepped in as a guest host to help fill out the roster of women at the table during Whoop Goldberg’s suspension.
Star Jones was of course one of the original co-hosts of The View alongside Meredith Vieira, and they were joined by Debbie Matenopoulos (who left the series in 1998 after just two seasons and never returned as a regular), Joy Behar (who has been a regular co-host in every season except for two since 1997), and Barbara Walters. Elisabeth Hasselbeck came on board in Season 7 and remained through Season 16.
The show has gone through a lot of co-hosts since Meredith Vieira’s departure in 2006, and some have involved a fair amount of drama. Meghan McCain was a controversial part of the panel during and even after her time there, and the show involved politics more and more over the years, with Debbie Matenopoulos even coming out earlier this year to say that The View was never supposed to get political.
McCain claimed in 2021 that The View was a toxic workplace with backstage problems, although ABC reportedly clapped back at her comments shortly after she made them. Former host Candace Cameron Bure, who was the conservative voice on the panel for two seasons, has since said that she has “PTSD” from attempting to manage the emotional stress of the job.
All things considered, it may be for the best that Meredith Vieira treasures the nine years that she loved on The View and doesn’t return as a full-time host. Fans can always enjoy it if she turns up as a guest host again, even though she seems happy to evolve in her own career and pursue different kinds of gigs. If you want to check out the current roster of The View, you can find the series streaming with a Hulu subscription.
