Celebrity News April 13, 2022
Whoopi Goldberg’s ‘The View’ Absence Explained
ABC
Earlier this week, “The View” host Joy Behar announced that Whoopi Goldberg will be taking a leave of absence!
Behar shared, “If you're wondering where Whoopi is, the girl's got a movie she's making and she will be back when she finishes whatever she's doing. So she's gone for a while."
Goldberg will return to “The View” on May 2.
While Whoopi is gone, political commentator Alyssa Farah Griffith has been filling in.
Whoopi is in Scotland, where she is filming the Prime Video limited series “Anansi Boys,” in which she plays the villain Bird Woman.
Goldberg recently said about the project, which is based on the fantasy novel of the same name, “I have been a fan of this book for a very long time. When Neil Gaiman told me it was being brought to the screen, I did everything I could to be part of it to help make people aware of Anansi and all his magic."
She’ll be working on the series with Fiona Shaw, CCH Pounder and L. Scott Caldwell.
ABC
Whoopi Goldberg Reveals She Nearly Died During Her 1-Month Absence from ‘The View’
View StoryIn 2019, Goldberg took nearly a month off from “The View” due to a battle with pneumonia. When she returned, she revealed, “I am here, I am up and moving around, not as fast as I'd like to be, but I am okay. I'm not dead. So, here's what happened. I had pneumonia, and I was septic. Pneumonia in both lungs, which meant there was fluid. There was all kinds of stuff going on and, yes, I came very, very close to leaving the Earth.”
A year before, "Anansi Boys" author Neil Gaiman opened up about wanting Whoopi play Bird Woman for decades. He told Variety, "When I first conceived ‘Anansi Boys’ decades ago, I imagined Whoopi Goldberg as Bird Woman. She mentioned that she had just finished listening to Sir Lenny Henry’s reading of ‘Anansi Boys’ and that it was one of her favorite books. Sometimes things feel planned and inevitable, and we are incredibly lucky. She’s going to be scary.”
