Joy Behar, the longest-tenured panelist on ABC's "The View," announced she will leave the show for two weeks to perform her stage play in Paris and London, a hiatus that will force producers to rotate a lineup of guest cohosts through the liberal talk show's chairs.
Behar made the announcement during the Tuesday, May 26 episode of the show's "Behind the Table" podcast, USA TODAY reported. Executive producer Brian Teta confirmed Behar will remain on the panel through the end of the week before her absence begins.
The play, titled "My First Ex-Husband," will run at the Boulevard Theatre in London's West End, with additional performances scheduled in Paris. Behar will be joined onstage by comedian Jackie Hoffman and two British actors.
The New York Post reported a direct quote from Behar laying out the itinerary:
"I fly to Paris this week, and then I go take the tunnel to London after a week, and I'll be in London a second week doing my play, 'My First Ex-Husband,' at the Boulevard Theatre in the West End."
That timeline, one week in Paris, a second in London, fills in a gap the primary report left vague, pinning the absence at roughly two weeks rather than the looser "several weeks" language ABC's production team used.
Behar also plans to use the trip for writing and visiting cultural sites, though the show offered no further detail on that front.
ABC has lined up a rotation of guest cohosts to cover Behar's seat. The names announced so far: comedian Sheryl Underwood, podcast host Kara Swisher, regular panelist Ana Navarro, and Whoopi Goldberg. Goldberg's inclusion is notable because she typically takes Fridays off. During Behar's absence, she is expected to appear on Friday episodes, an unusual scheduling shift that signals how thin the bench gets when one of the show's anchors walks off the set, even temporarily.
Underwood has filled in before during what the show has described as short-term absences related to health issues and injury recovery, though ABC did not specify which prior absences those were or when they occurred.
The Walt Disney Company, ABC's parent, did not immediately respond to USA TODAY's request for comment about the hiatus. No further statement from the network has been reported.
"The View" launched in 1997, and Behar was part of the original run. She returned to the panel in 2015 and has remained a daily presence since. Her tenure has made her one of the most recognizable voices on daytime television, and one of the most polarizing, particularly among conservative viewers who have watched the show's panel drift further left over the years.
Behar has not been shy about wading into political fights from the "Hot Topics" desk. She recently clashed with Sen. John Fetterman over his support for a DHS confirmation, a dust-up that drew a sharp response from the White House and underscored how "The View" functions less as a talk show and more as a political operation with a studio audience.
That dynamic, celebrity hosts doubling as partisan commentators, is not unique to ABC. Cable competitors face their own talent-management headaches. MSNBC recently trimmed "Morning Joe" to three hours after reports that hosts were worn down by the four-hour daily grind, a reminder that the broadcast model depends on personalities who increasingly set their own terms.
The Washington Times confirmed the two-week duration of Behar's European trip and the fill-in host lineup, consistent with the details reported elsewhere.
Several questions remain unanswered. ABC has not released a day-by-day schedule showing which guest cohost will appear when. The exact dates of the Boulevard Theatre run have not been made public. And no one at the network has explained whether Behar's contract allows open-ended personal leave or whether this required special negotiation with producers.
None of that is unusual for a daytime show that guards its internal business closely. But the silence from Disney, which owns ABC and controls the show's budget, is worth noting. When your highest-profile panelist announces a European vacation on a podcast and your corporate parent declines to comment, it raises fair questions about who is running the ship.
The broader media landscape has seen plenty of friction between networks and their on-air talent. Disputes between hosts and management have become a recurring feature at outlets across the dial, and ABC is no exception.
Fox News also covered the announcement, characterizing the hiatus as brief, a framing that depends on whether you measure brevity in calendar days or in the number of live shows a panelist misses during a stretch when the political news cycle rarely takes a day off.
Behar's European theater run is, on its face, a personal project. She wants to perform a play she wrote. Fair enough. But the ease with which a host can step away from a show that bills itself as essential daily political commentary tells you something about how seriously the people making it take the product.
"The View" asks its audience to tune in every weekday for urgent takes on the news. Then one of its stars announces she is heading to Paris for a week and London for another, and the network's plan is to rotate in whoever is available. That is not how you run a news desk. It is how you run a variety hour.
Viewers who depend on "The View" for their politics, and there are millions, deserve to know what they are actually watching. It is a show built around personalities, not principles. And when the personality boards a plane to Europe, the show just grabs whoever answers the phone.
