Don’t freak, fans of “The View.” A show spokesperson says the daytime talker is “on track” to find a replacement for Meghan McCain.
“Our plans are on track as we continue to look for the right person to join our panel of smart, dynamic women,” a spokesperson for the talk show told TheWrap on Tuesday. “We look forward to welcoming guest co-hosts for return appearances and introducing new names into the mix in the new year.”
There is no hard internal deadline to pick a permanent successor, one show insider told TheWrap, but it was always expected to be a 2022 (not 2021) decision.
Earlier on Monday, Politico wrote that “The View” is having a hard time finding the right person for that spot, and that longtime hosts Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin are “upping the pressure to pick a successor, and voicing their displeasure at having to introduce new guest hosts week after week in a seemingly endless process that they find disruptive to the flow of the show.”
When reached, an ABC News spokesperson declined to comment on the reported frustrations of the longtime hosts.
“The problem is that they bring people on under the mantle that this woman is a conservative, when they’re ‘Never Trump,’ so they don’t represent the country,” one of the rotating guest hosts told Politico.
“They are really looking for a unicorn,” a former show staffer told Politico. “They want someone who is going to fight — but not too hard, because they don’t want it to be ugly and bickering.”
Now in its 25th season, “The View” has been plugging people into McCain’s seat via a rotating cast of conservative guest co-hosts. Sara Haines is the show’s fourth regular host. Readers will probably notice that Haines was not included in the grousing reported by Politico — or at least, we did.
Season 25 started on Sept. 7. That week, which was the first time all co-hosts were together in the studio since March 2020, featured Utah Congresswoman Mia Love in the rotating-guest seat. Additional guest hosts have been Condoleezza Rice, S.E. Cupp, Gretchen Carlson, Carly Fiorina, Eboni K. Williams, Mary Katharine Ham, Alyssa Farah and Cameran Eubanks, to name a few fill-ins.
McCain, the daughter of the late John McCain, left the show after four seasons. Her last episode was in August.
“Twenty-five years is such an incredible milestone,” executive producer Brian Teta said ahead of this season. “We have so much planned to honor this amazing platform that Barbara Walters created. I can’t think of a better way to kick off that celebration than by welcoming the co-hosts back to the iconic ‘View’ table and to have them in front of a live studio audience again. We have some truly exciting plans to celebrate this anniversary all season long. We’ll be inviting back all of our legendary lineup of former ‘View’ co-hosts to guest as well as ‘taking a little time’ to find our next permanent cohost to join the panel.”
The “taking a little time” thing is the sign-off line for the show: “Take a little time to enjoy the view.” It also seemed to be prescient in this case.