Joy Behar is temporarily off The View after dislocating her shoulder backstage before a Thursday taping, co-host Sunny Hostin says she is recovering and will return soon.
Mediaite reported that Behar sat out the episode after the injury happened backstage ahead of the taping. Hostin told viewers the veteran co-host would be back before long.
Hostin opened the show by accounting for two empty seats at the table. Whoopi Goldberg remained away filming a movie. Then came the update on Behar.
"And, unfortunately, our dear friend Joy dislocated her shoulder," Hostin said. "Yeah, so she’s recovering and will be back soon."
That left Hostin in the moderator chair usually held by Goldberg or Behar. She noted she was the “next oldest” host on the panel, then corrected herself with a laugh: “Or, let’s say, seasoned. I like seasoned better!”
Regular co-hosts Sara Haines, Ana Navarro, and Alyssa Farah Griffin were on the broadcast. Former co-host Sherri Shepherd returned as a guest, a booking already in the works once Goldberg’s movie absence was announced.
Absences are hardly rare on the daytime roundtable. Whoopi Goldberg’s latest step away for film work is only the newest chapter in a long pattern of temporary exits and fill-ins.
Behar is the longest-running host in the show’s history. She joined during the first season in 1997 after working as a producer on Good Morning America and has outlasted multiple cast shake-ups.
She briefly left in 2013, around the same stretch when co-creator Barbara Walters departed in May of that year. Behar told Deadline at the time it “seemed like the right time,” citing a play she was writing and standup she had been neglecting.
Two years later she was back, joking, “Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.” She said she was happy to be “back home” and eager to weigh in while Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump dominated the spotlight.
Shepherd’s return as guest co-host carries its own history. She left the show in 2014, the same year Jenny McCarthy also exited. On her farewell stretch she described years of private doubt about belonging at the table.
"I cried in my dressing room for three years saying why am I at this table. I don’t know what I’m doing," Shepherd said at the time. Her son Jeffrey joined her for that final day.
Sudden host gaps keep landing on the same program. Sara Haines has had her own abrupt absence and return in recent coverage, another reminder that the table’s lineup can change with little notice.
Behar’s latest sit-out is narrower in scope. Hostin’s on-air account framed it as a dislocated shoulder, recovery underway, and a short-term absence rather than a departure. No separate written statement from the show or a return date appeared in the initial report.
How the injury happened backstage was not described. The calendar date of that Thursday taping was not pinned down beyond the relative timing in the coverage.
For a franchise built on loud political talk, the production side often looks like musical chairs. Goldberg films. Behar heals. Guests slide in. The cameras keep rolling.
Viewers who track the show’s cast churn have seen this movie before, including earlier moments when Behar already had to sit out over a shoulder injury tied to the same workplace.
Outside the ABC daytime lane, competitors keep testing the format. Fox News has even floated an all-female podcast aimed squarely at the same audience conversation The View has owned for years.
Behar herself has given the show plenty of on-air spectacle across nearly three decades, from pointed monologues to lighter chaos such as the time she planted a kiss on actor Anson Mount during a live broadcast.
This week’s story is simpler. The longest-tenured voice at the table is home nursing a dislocated shoulder while Hostin steers the panel and Shepherd guests in the gap.
Daytime television will survive one co-host’s recovery week. Whether The View can keep selling steady wisdom while its own roster keeps cycling out for movies, injuries, and second thoughts is a different question, one its audience already knows by heart.
