- Whoopi Goldberg will not be on The View this week.
- The actress previously booked a recurring part on the long-running Italian soap Un Posto Al Sole.
- Goldberg, 70, has taken prior breaks from the talk show to film parts in the recent past.
Whoopi Goldberg isn’t on The View this week — and no, unlike colleague Joy Behar‘s recent extended absence from the Hot Topics table, it’s not because of a foot injury.
Months after officially joining the supporting cast of Un Posto Al Sole, the longest-running Italian soap opera in history, Goldberg will finally be back overseas to film her guest spot on the television program.
“You’re not going to be on The View next week because you’re about to star in an Italian soap opera,” producer Brian Teta announced on Thursday’s Behind the Table podcast, though the 70-year-old EGOT-winning actress pushed back at the notion that she’s a “star” of the project.
“Well, I’m not starring in it,” she clarified. “I’m in the Italian soap opera.”
Goldberg told Teta that she “was looking for things to do” as an entertainer, beyond the scope of The View, and that her team made the soap opera gig “work” for her.
“We will miss you desperately, but you’ll be back,” Teta stressed, while Goldberg added, “I only know soap operas here. I love a soap opera, I love it. I don’t know how they work there, I don’t know if they do four lines from here or three lines from there, but it’ll be new and I wish I could take y’all with me. I might be able to shoot something on my cell.”
Of her decision to take a temporary hiatus from The View, Goldberg said that “it’s time” to step away for a bit.
“It’s time for me to do some things in addition to this,” she said, referencing her nearly two-decade stint on the show, which she’s moderated since 2007. “This is the longest-running job I’ve ever had. I’ve never had a job like this before.”
Goldberg said elsewhere on the podcast that she “didn’t fly for 20 years” due to anxieties about air travel, though she’s made several excursions to Italy in the recent past.
In 2023, Goldberg traveled to the Vatican to visit Pope Francis, where she revealed that she gave him Sister Act merch, as the late religious figure was a big fan of the film series — enough so that she also offered him a cameo in the long-gestating third film before his death.
“You know, we’re trying to help bring the sisters into the 21st century,” Goldberg told Pope Francis at the time. Though she said she described the project to him as a “silly” one, the actress remembered Pope Francis stopping her. “One of the best things you can do for people is to help them and to have joy and to make them laugh,” she recalled him saying.
Similarly, Behar also traveled to Italy for a vacation in early 2023, and revealed on the air that she called an Italian woman a “bitch” because she wouldn’t let her use a restroom on a train.
“I said it in English because she wouldn’t let me pee in the first-class lounge. I said, ‘Please, let me just go!'” Behar said in April 2023. “I said, ‘Listen, don’t be a bitch.’ She wouldn’t let me go.”
