Meredith Vieira, in no uncertain terms, does not want to return to The View! The former show moderator, 68, opened up in an interview with E! News Daily Pop earlier in June. Meredith appeared on the show from 1997, its debut year, and 2006, and she has no intention of returning. “There’s a time for everything, I like to say, and I kind of did my time,” she told the outlet during a virtual interview. “That sounds like a prison term, actually,” she added mischievously.
And while she may not want to return, she said in all sincerity that she enjoyed the run. “I did nine years, and I loved it,” she added. But she didn’t hesitate to also point out that the show has undergone dramatic shifts over the years. So much so, that she doesn’t consider it the same show — not that it’s a bad thing.
“It’s a different show and I think it’s fantastic,” the Who Wants To Be a Millionaire alum said. “For me, it was so great to be on the ground floor of something because you have a bond with people when you’re creating something as a group.” Meredith starred on the vibrant TV group discussion program alongside Star Jones, Barbara Walters, and Joy Behar, among others.
But the iconic host said it wasn’t as easy as it looked. “We really didn’t know our audiences for that first year,” she admitted. “They would bus them in wherever they could find them. I think they were dragging them off the street! Lots of people with oxygen tanks,” the former Today cohost joked. “We would go, ‘Where did they get them from?’ Or people who did not speak English who were obviously on a tour of New York, and they loaded them on a bus. I don’t know if they told them what they were going to go see.” Earlier this year, the original co-hosts reunited for the show’s 25th anniversary, sans Barbara.
But clearly, it all worked out, and the show (along with her co-hosting gig on Today) helped cement her status as a household name. And she says it worked out perfectly. “We had little kids and I was always torn between being home with them and being on the road,” she shared of her decision to join the talk show. “So when this opportunity came up, my husband Richard [M. Cohen] was the one who said, ‘You really should audition for this.’”