OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Whoopi Goldberg is going to be missing for the ABC Daytime talk show “The View” “for a while.”
The reason is not because of the numerous ridiculous things she has said, including those that had her accused of antisemitism, but because she is working on a movie.
On Monday, her cohost, Joy Behar, announced that Goldberg would be taking time off from the show.
“If you’re wondering where Whoopi is, the girl’s got a movie she’s making,” the 79-year-old said.
“And she will be back when she finishes whatever she’s doing. So she’s gone for a while,” she said.
WATCH: @JoyVBehar announces on @TheView that @WhoopiGoldberg "gone for a while" from the show to film movie pic.twitter.com/HD6Imye6cg
— Jackson Richman (@jacksonrichman) April 11, 2022
The Hollywood Reporter reported:
Amazon Studios’ series adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys has added Oscar-winner Whoopi Goldberg to its cast.
Goldberg is one of six actors joining the series, which is filming in Scotland and will debut on Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service. Hakeem Kae-Kazim, Emmanuel Ighodaro, Cecilia Noble, Ayanna Witter-Johnson, and Don Gilet have also been cast.
Goldberg will pay Bird Woman, the god of birds and one of the story’s primary antagonists. She and the other new cast actors will play gods who make up the World Before Time — a place where the animals are gods who still walk and that’s full of beauty, magic, and danger.
“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.
“When I first conceived Anansi Boys, decades ago, I imagined Whoopi Goldberg as Bird Woman. I wasn’t able to meet her until 2018 when she interviewed me with some of the Good Omens team at New York Comic-Con. At which point 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,” Gaiman said.
This year Goldberg came under fire after being accused of antisemitism.
The Sister Act actress said that the “Holocaust isn’t about race… it’s about man’s inhumanity to man.”
Co-host Ana Navarro attempted to correct her when she said, “But it’s about white supremacists going after Jews.”
But Goldberg, as she often does, interrupted her cohost, talked over her, and insisted that “these are two white groups of people! The minute you turn it into a race it goes down this alley. Let’s talk about it for what it is. It’s how people treat each other. It doesn’t matter if you’re Black or white, Jews, it’s each other.”
She continued arguing her point when she appeared that same night on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
“I feel, being Black, when we talk about race, it’s a very different thing to me. So I said I thought the Holocaust wasn’t about race. And people got very angry and still are angry. I’m getting a lot of mail from folks and a lot of real anger. But I thought it was a salient discussion because as a Black person I think of race as being something that I can see,” she argued.
“So I see you and know what race you are. I thought it was more about man’s inhumanity to man. People said, ‘no, no, we are a race.’ I felt differently. I respect everything everyone is saying to me.”
“When you talk about being a racist, you can’t call this racism. This was evil. This wasn’t based on skin. You couldn’t tell who was Jewish. You had to delve deeply and figure it out,” she said.
“When the Klan is coming down the street and I’m standing with a Jewish friend – I’m going to run. But if my friend decides not to run, they’ll get passed by most times, because you can’t tell most times,” the host said.
“That’s what I was trying to explain. I understand not everybody sees it that way and I did a lot of harm to myself and people decided I was all these other things that I’m not. I get it, folks are angry, I accept that, and I did it to myself, and I’ll work hard to not think that way again,” she said.
