Fans of “The View” would note that Joy Behar took a leave of absence from the show for two seasons in 2013. At the time, Behar told Deadline that she left the show to focus on her standup. “It seemed like the right time,” she said. “You reach a point when you say to yourself, ‘Do I want to keep doing this?’ There are other things on my plate I want to do — I’ve been writing a play, I’ve been neglecting my standup.” However, Behar made her grand return to the show in 2015, and opened up to Meredith Vieira on “Behind The Table,” about what really went down about her departure.
“They fired me at one point. I remember I was eating with you at Dox. I said, ‘I don’t know, they canned me. I don’t know why.’ They said I was becoming predictable,” Behar told Vieira. “That was the end of that and I was so glad to leave. … I said, ‘Good, I’ve been waiting to get out of here.'”
Behar went on to do her own thing, but was eventually courted back on the show in 2015 by Hillary McLaughlin, a then-new executive producer. “I had to have some reason to make money,” she said. “When I came back, they promised me there’d be smarter topics.” While Behar was given her job back, she also had a similar experience with Walters.