Joy Behar Says Star Jones’ Surprise ‘The View’ Exit Nearly Gave Barbara Walters ‘a Heart Attack’

Star Jones has no regrets about the way she handled her dramatic departure from The View — even if Joy Behar believes the surprise announcement nearly gave the late Barbara Walters a heart attack.

Jones, 64, and Behar, 83, revisited the tense 2006 moment during the Tuesday, September 22, episode of The View: Behind the Table podcast, with Behar recalling how Jones announced she was leaving the daytime talk show earlier than planned.

“She pulled a fast one at the end,” Behar said of her former cohost.

“Yeah, I did,” Jones said.

Behar explained that Jones was expected to wait until later that week to break the news.

“She’s supposed to say, ‘I’m leaving’ on Thursday. Tuesday, she comes in and says she’s going,” Behar recalled on the podcast. “You might’ve given Barbara a heart attack that day.”

Jones, however, stood by her decision. “I do what works for me,” she said.

During their chat on the Behind the Table podcast, the former View cohost then jokingly warned Behar against bringing up heart problems because both she and Walters eventually underwent major cardiac procedures.

“Don’t say that, because we ended up both having open-heart surgery,” Jones said. “That’s how connected BW and I were. We both had aortic valve problems. We gave each other heart problems!”

Walters died in December 2022 at age 93.

Despite revisiting one of the more difficult moments from Jones’ original run on The View, she and Behar also reflected on how their chemistry helped launch both of their careers on the show.

“We’ve been together for 30 years,” Jones said on the podcast. “Joy and I, we fought, our very first time together during the audition, and I think that’s what got us both the job.”

Jones believes that immediate friction ultimately worked in their favor. “We clicked. They thought, this is the secret sauce, this is going to work, so they kept mixing up people, and it never worked the same,” she said on the podcast.