Whoopi Goldberg reacts to surprise reunion with former “The View” moderator Rosie O’Donnell after 11 years

Key Points

• The View icons Whoopi Goldberg and Rosie O’Donnell reunited at The Jellicle Ball.

• Goldberg and O’Donnell are among the most legendary cohosts to have sat at the Hot Topics table.

• “I thought she was in Ireland?” Sunny Hostin asked.

Two titans among The View history have reunited at (where else) Cats: The Jellicle Ball.

Whoopi Goldberg announced Wednesday morning on the talk show that she and former View moderator Rosie O’Donnell ran into each other backstage at the Tony-winning Broadway production, 11 years after they last sat at the Hot Topics table together.

“I made another trip to The Jellicle Ball last night. And look who I ran into!” Goldberg said at the top of the show’s latest installment.

The show then flashed to images of Goldberg and O’Donnell posing backstage at the production. The current panel of cohosts exclaimed, “Rosie!” in unison.

“Yes, Rosie was there, she looks amazing,” Goldberg confirmed.

Sunny Hostin jumped in to ask, “I thought she was in Ireland?” after O’Donnell previously announced that she moved to Europe amid Donald Trump’s second term in office.

“She came back. She has a one-woman show she’s doing, too. She’s got all kinds of great stuff going on, but she looked amazing,” Goldberg explained.

Conservative panelist Alyssa Farah Griffin exclaimed that, as she looked at the images of O’Donnell and Goldberg together, it felt like her “Mount Rushmore right there” in the photo.

While Goldberg has remained at the Hot Topics table since 2007, O’Donnell’s relationship with the talk show is far less linear.

After O’Donnell joined the program as moderator in 2006, she left before the end of her first season at the table following an iconic, infamous back-and-forth clash with longtime foe Elisabeth Hasselbeck on the air in 2007.

While she and Hasselbeck have traded public insults ever since (including within the last year), O’Donnell eventually returned to The View following Hasselbeck’s 2013 departure. O’Donnell sat on the panel from 2014-2015, again exiting the show after one season.

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O’Donnell has spoken out against the show in subsequent years, including when she alleged that her split-screen fight with Hasselbeck was “a setup” at the hands of producer Bill Geddie, who died in 2023.

The View airs weekdays on ABC.

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