‘I just say what I say’
Joy Behar refuses to live in a cancel culture.
“The View” co-host, 79, got candid about why she doesn’t believe in canceling others in a recent profile for Time magazine.
The controversial talk show emcee noted how her comments are never meant to hurt people.
“This whole idea of canceling people for what they say, I’d say the answer to that is, ‘What was your intention?’” she said.
“Everything that I got into trouble for was not intentional. I just say what I say,” the New York native went on.
Behar added, “And then they’re upset with me. I’m their favorite target over at Breitbart and Fox.”
Speaking of cancellation, the comedian also touched upon her brief departure from “The View” back in 2013.
“I was glad to be fired,” Behar recalled. “I basically was sick of the show at that point for some reason, I don’t even remember why.”
Variety magazine’s co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh, who authored the book “Ladies Who Punch,” told Time that Elisabeth Hasselbeck was also let go from the show at the time.
Setoodeh noted that while Hasselbeck, 45, cried over her firing, Behar seemed indifferent about the exit.
Longtime co-host Sunny Hostin also spoke to Time alongside Behar, revealing that her colleague “doesn’t hold a grudge.”
The 53-year-old attorney continued, “I think because she doesn’t remember what happened the day before.”
Behar’s co-anchors often prompt her on any recent insults against her, but she just dusts it off her shoulder. “That’s how she’s been able to deal with this show. She just leaves it at the table and then moves on for another day,” Hostin said.
Behar also hinted that she may be ready to sign off soon. As she approaches her 80th birthday this fall, she’s “sort of on extra time now.”
“I don’t have to work. I don’t have to be on television. I don’t have to have the microphone. They want to give it to me, I’ll take it,” she said.
The panelist’s rep shot down rumors she was retiring from “The View” to The Post earlier this month.
“Fake news,” her rep said on July 5, noting that Behar signed another three-year deal with ABC. Her new contract will keep her on until at least 2025.
The author of “Great Gasbag: An A-Z Study Guide To Surviving Trump World” got personal during the interview when she discussed her ectopic pregnancy early in her career and how the experience allowed her to enter comedy.
The situation put her life in perspective, which ultimately inspired her to take to the stage, she explained. She embarked on her stand-up career in the early 1980s following her divorce from ex-husband Joseph Behar.
She noted, “Stand-up comedy, especially for a woman in those days, was a particularly suicidal occupation. I did some garbage-y gigs for, you know, a hundred bucks, where I had to drive to the bowels of New Jersey. I’d get lost on the Jersey Turnpike.”
Behar’s career has had its ups and downs, but her experience in comedy taught her how to deal with others who dislike her — and how to keep pushing forward when certain jokes don’t register with viewers.
“You have a power when you have that microphone,” she said. “People don’t like it. They don’t like it that I’m a powerful person on ‘The View’ … I was a powerful person as a comedian holding a microphone. Too bad.”
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