“The View” moderator Whoopi Goldberg sat down with Executive Producer Brian Teta to discuss the intricacies of co-hosting the daytime talk show and share an inside look at the morning Hot Topics meetings. Plus, Goldberg shared why staying off of social media is her biggest advice to the co-hosts on the “Behind The Table” podcast.
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Goldberg and Teta have worked together over the last six years, but the EGOT has been moderating for nearly 15 years.
“My attitude has always been, I don’t have to agree with you, but I will listen,” she told Teta. “Everybody’s entitled to their opinion.” “We get a little heated, but at the end of the day, you’re still yourself,” she added.
However, Goldberg pointed out that staying calm, cool, and collected at the Hot Topics table isn’t the hardest obstacle to overcome as a co-host. “The biggest challenge on this show is staying away from social media and remembering who you are,” she said. “It’s much easier to be who I am than who people want me to be, and that’s been a challenge.”
Goldberg added that “in part,” social media can make people feel like “they’re relevant,” but “you have to have a little more to you than what other people are saying you are on social media.”
Teta said that the “bellwether” for a co-host’s success on the show is if they can be “authentic and true to themselves,” and “reading about yourself can make you deviate from that.”
Since its inception in 1997, “The View” has become a Hot Topic in pop culture. Teta said that the idea for the “Behind The Table” podcast came from the notion that the public “likes to read about stories of ‘The View’ and what happens backstage, and nobody really understands what happens backstage, except for the people that are here.”
Considering what the public doesn’t know about the show, Goldberg commended its ability to give co-hosts space to let their opinions develop over time. “My views on things change and shift,” Goldberg said. “We give people permission to evolve.”
Each morning before the show goes on-air, the panel and staff join together for the Hot Topics meeting. Teta shared the details of what goes on each morning and how they prepare for the live show.
“You need five people that theoretically all are interested in different things,” Teta said. “In order to figure out what the topics we’re going to talk about any day are, you need at least three people to feel passionate about this.”
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“We really put this show together at eight o’clock in the morning,” he added. After spending 14 seasons with the show, Goldberg said she prefers Hot Topics to be seasoned like “an everything burger.”
“I want it to be everything,” she told Teta. “I don’t want it to just be politics. I don’t want it to just be pop culture. I don’t want it to be any one thing. I want it to be a plethora of things.”
“It makes me interested in what people have to say, which is why I like hearing from folks,” she continued. “You have to have people on who are different in their opinions from you. What you don’t need is someone who has a different opinion than you and wants to fight.”
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Teta said that there seems to be “this feeling now that everyone on the panel has to be a political expert,” but when you consider the show’s history, some of the most notorious political arguments came from co-hosts who weren’t “political pundits.” Goldberg responded, “It is not easy to put us in a box, though people do try all the time.”
EGOT Goldberg joined the show in 2007 as moderator and has been at the helm of the table ever since. She’s the show’s longest-running moderator and was honored in 2017 with the Disney Legends Award, which celebrates artists whose work has significantly contributed to Disney’s enduring reputation for creative excellence.
As the Emmy Award-winning daytime talk show geared up for its 19th season, Teta was brought on in August 2015. He previously spent 11 years at “The Late Show With David Letterman” as a supervising producer and spent several years as a producer for “Ricki Lake,” “The Montel Williams Show” and “Judge Hatchett.”
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On the tenth episode and final episode of “Behind The Table,” they look back over the last nine episodes of the show’s podcast series where co-hosts have been reflecting on their time on the show, discuss filling the fifth seat at the table and the importance of having different views on the show. Listen to Whoopi Goldberg and Brian Teta’s “Behind The Table” podcast episode: