Jenny McCarthy Says Leaving ‘The View’ Was About ‘Saving’ Her ‘Life’: Barbara Walters Wanted ‘Fighting’

Jenny McCarthy, who has repeatedly voiced her controversial stance on vaccines, may have not been a good fit for The View.

During the December 11 episode of the Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark podcast, the Masked Singer judge, 53, was asked by host Alex Clark if her “activism” played a role in her departure from the popular daytime talk show.

“I think it was more, um… ‘saving my own life,’” said McCarthy, who spent just one year as a cohost from 2013 to 2014.

When the mother of one — whose son Evan (with ex-husband John Asher) was diagnosed with autism when he was about 2 ½ years old — was announced as a cohost, it sparked widespread criticism due to her belief that vaccinations could be linked to Autism Spectrum Disorder.

“I went on that show with the purpose [that] they were hiring me to be more fun, like old-school Jenny,” McCarthy said, describing her previous MTV co-hosting personality as “this boisterous, slapping-the-guys-around, ballsy, kind of fun girl” who was “light and fluffy.”

McCarthy claimed that the team behind the ABC talk show “wanted to bring that to The View, and within a week, [creator] Barbara [Walters] wanted to change that.”

The Jenny McCarthy Show alum claimed the legendary journalist, who died in 2022 at age 93, “wanted to go back to politics and hardcore fighting.”

“I know how to fight about one thing,” McCarthy said, seemingly alluding to her take on vaccines. “The View doesn’t want to talk about that one thing. So, I didn’t really have a place for it.”

However, McCarthy said she “was grateful I got to be there for a year of Barbara Walters,” adding: “I felt lucky in that aspect.”

When podcast host Clark chimed in, saying, “[Barbara] was kind of losing it while you were on that show,” McCarthy claimed that Walters was “just showing signs of dementia during that time.”

Still, McCarthy said, “I really bonded with her, and she bonded with me — for some reason really well — during that time. But it was a good thing, and a grateful thing, that I lasted a year.”