Former The View co-host Jenny McCarthy got a little help from the show to “look like” she could talk knowledgeably politics, according to former co-host Sherri Shepherd, who said McCarthy ended up looking like “a sexy librarian” instead.
Shepherd, who now hosts her own talk show, Sherri, overlapped with McCarthy’s one season on the show in 2013 during her own seven-year stint. Reacting to McCarthy’s declaration that she’d never return to The View, Shepherd revealed on her show Thursday the lengths producers went to make her look like she knew what she was talking about.
“I looked over and said, ‘What the hell are you wearing glasses for?’” Shepherd recalled. “She was like, ‘Sherri, they want me to look like I know politics. I was sitting there, and I said, ‘How do you have Playmate of the Year looking conservative?’ They’d try to make Jenny look conservative, but all she looked like was a sexy librarian.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to a reps for McCarthy and The View for comment.
McCarthy is now perhaps best known for her anti-vaccine commentary and support of Donald Trump and MAGA. She told Stephen Miller’s wife Katie Miller on her podcast this week that The View “asked me to come back for, like, reunion shows. I was like, over my dead body would I ever step foot in that place.”
She also told Miller that “getting through that year” she worked on the show “was really difficult,” because she was faced with heavy topics on air instead of the lighter fare she said she was hired for.
Shepherd has shared her own experience with feeling out of her depth on the show when the co-hosts discussed politics.
“Everything that Jenny is saying is absolutely true,” Shepherd said during her Thursday broadcast. “I felt really bad for my friend, because they did—they brought her on the show after a lot of focus groups said they wanted less fighting about politics.” Ultimately, Shepherd explained, “the focus groups changed their minds.”
“Two weeks later,” she continued, McCarthy was wearing the eyewear to look more politically inclined. “She felt like it was a bait and switch,” Shepherd said, noting that she “felt bad” McCarthy “went through all of that.”
Shepherd previously shared that she got through the heavy discussions by using comedy: “I can’t debate you on politics, but I learned to make myself concise and funny,” she told Vulture about her time on the show in September.
McCarthy didn’t navigate the mismatch as successfully, as the former Miss October 1993 and Playboy Magazine’s Playmate of the Year for 1994 was initially brought onto the show because focus group’s found her “light” and “sexy,” as Shepherd put it. McCarthy also explained to Katie Miller that it was more than a lack of knowledge that made the show’s “Hot Topics” conversations uncomfortable.
Only since Trump’s rise in politics has McCarthy felt the confidence to be vocal about her conservative views, she said: “I’m much more political now in terms of having opinions, because of, thank God, our latest administration.”
