Is it possible that the late Barbara Walters was forced out of her seat on The View — the hit daytime talk show that she created in 1997? According to her friend and former co-host Lisa Ling, that may just be the case.
Ling made the revelation while speaking to The Cut when she remembered a short moment from Walters’ last day of filming at the Hot Topics table in 2014.
“I’ve never shared this with anyone,” Ling said, before revealing that once they were no longer live, she asked Walters, “Barbara, in a couple of months, are you going to be lounging in a hammock in Tahiti?”
The legendary journalist then allegedly replied, “They’re making me quit.”
Walters, who passed away late last year in her New York City home at the age of 93, founded and co-hosted The View in 1997. While she retired from co-hosting in 2014, she remained an executive producer.
Despite Ling’s claims that Walters was urged to quit the show, the famed interviewer assured Variety ahead of her departure that the decision to leave was completely her own.
“I think Jay felt that he was pushed out,” Walters said, referencing Jay Leno‘s emotional final episode of The Tonight Show earlier that same year. “I don’t feel like I’m being pushed out. This was my decision.”
She added, “I should really be depressed, but I’m not. So maybe there’s something wrong with me. What’s wrong with this woman that she’s not depressed about leaving television?”
In her final episode, which aired in May 2014, female journalists from across the industry surprised Walters with a tribute. Stars like Oprah Winfrey, Hoda Kotb, Savannah Guthrie and Robin Roberts were some of the big names present for her farewell.
“I had to be here for your last show, to celebrate you, because of what you have meant to me,” Winfrey told Walters, per People. “Like everyone else, I want to thank you for being a pioneer and everything that word means.”
She continued, “It means being the first; the first in the room to knock down the door, to break down the barriers, to pave the road that we all walk on. I thank you for that. And I thank you for the courage it took every day to get up and keep doing it.”
The View airs on weekdays at 11/10c on ABC.