You won’t be seeing Whoopi Goldberg on “The View” for awhile.
The 66-year-old actress is starring in the upcoming Amazon Prime series adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s “Anansi Boys” and will begin filming – so she’s on hiatus from the show.
Goldberg’s “View” co-host Joy Behar shared the news on Monday’s episode. “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,” she said.
CNN conservative political commentator Alyssa Farah Griffin served as a guest co-host during Monday’s show.
In “Anansi Boys,” The EGOT winner will portray the villain Bird Woman, the God of Birds. Her character is seeking revenge on titular character Anansi, Trickster God of Stories (Delroy Lindo), who wronged her in the past.
USA TODAY has reached out to Goldberg’s rep for more information.
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“I have been a fan of this book for a very long time and 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,” Goldberg said in a press release of her involvement.
Gaiman added, “When I first conceived ‘Anansi Boys,’ decades ago, I imagined Whoopi Goldberg as Bird Woman.” He shared that when he met Goldberg at New York Comic Con in 2018, the actress had just finished “Anansi Boys” and expressed 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.”
Goldberg’s absence from “The View” comes two months after her two-week suspension from the daytime series in February after receiving backlash for comments she made about the Holocaust on air.
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During an episode of the ABC daytime talk show in late January, Goldberg received pushback from her co-hosts — and later from users on Twitter — after claiming the Holocaust, which involved the murder of 6 million Jews and other victims, was not “about race.”
She made the comments during a discussion about a Tennessee school board banning the book “Maus” from the eighth grade English and language arts curriculum. The McMinn County School Board in eastern Tennessee voted 10-0 earlier this month to ban the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, citing concerns over “rough” language and a nude drawing of a woman, according to the Jan. 10 meeting minutes posted to the district website.
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Following the controversy, ABC News president Kim Godwin said that Goldberg would be suspended from “The View” for two weeks effective immediately for “her wrong and hurtful comments,” in a statement shared with USA TODAY at the time.
“While Whoopi has apologized, I’ve asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments,” Godwin added. “The entire ABC News organization stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends, family and communities.”
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Goldberg posted a statement expressing her “sincerest apologies” on Twitter after the episode aired, also echoing a statement from Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt who wrote that the Holocaust “was about the Nazi’s systematic annihilation of the Jewish people – who they deemed to be an inferior race.”
Contributing: Charles Trepany, Rachel Wegner, The (Nashville) Tennessean; The Associated Press
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Whoopi Goldberg off ‘The View’ for ‘a while’ to film ‘Anansi Boys’
