Elisabeth Hasselbeck Tried to Walk Off The View Live On Air Over Morning After Pill Fight

By Hazel Cills  |  April 5, 2019 | 4:20pm
EntertainmentTV
Elisabeth Hasselbeck Tried to Walk Off The View Live On Air Over Morning After Pill Fight
Image:AP Images

Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who terrorized The View for 10 years with her conservative views, was fired from the show in 2013. But before that, she once tried to quit, quite dramatically, while the show was live.

In Ramin Setoodeh’s new book Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of The View, he writes about a moment in which Hasselbeck, incensed over a discussion about the FDA allowing the morning after pill for consumption, tried to quit the show during commercial break, Variety reports. Hasselbeck claimed that taking the pill is “the same thing as birthing a baby and leaving it out in the street,” even though the morning after pill prevents pregnancy after unprotected sex. There is no baby to begin with!

Walters repeatedly tells her to calm down and says, “We have to go on and we have to learn how to discuss these things in some sort of rational way,” after which the show cuts to commercial break and Hasselbeck rips up her cards. Variety obtained the audio of what happens off-screen when she leaves, which includes Hasselbeck screaming, “Fuck that! I’m not going to sit there and get reprimanded on the air.”

“What the fuck!” she says. “I don’t even swear, she has me swearing. This woman is driving me nuts.” Joy Behar tries to calm her down, but Hasselbeck leaves for her dressing room. Barbara Walters is heard saying that her walking off is ridiculous—“This is why we shouldn’t have this discussion,” she says.

Hasselbeck says on mic, “I quit, I’m quitting,” and producer Bill Geddie tells her she has to be professional and go back out there. She ends up running up the stairs before the show has to go back on air in 45 seconds.

Hasselbeck left The View in 2013 to go to Fox and Friends, where nobody would surely challenge her factually incorrect views on birth control. In her book Point of View: A Fresh Look at Work, Faith, and Freedom, she wrote that she was told by a producer in 2013 that her contract was not being renewed and that the show was going in a “less political direction.” Or maybe it’s because they were tired of moments like this one?

 
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