On Monday, Aug. 30, ABC announced that it would be “taking a little time to fill the seat” after McCain announced her departure from the long-running talk show back on July 1. In a Jeopardy!-like move, View execs will instead kick off Season 25 by employing a rotating cast of guest co-hosts, all of them known for their conservative politics much like McCain. Keep reading to find out who will guest-host on TheView when the talk show returns for its 25th season on ABC starting Tuesday, Sept. 7.
Who are The View’s guest hosts for 2021?
According to Deadline, the first guest host to sit in McCain’s seat on The View’s 25th season will be former Utah lawmaker Mia Love, who became the U.S. House of Representatives’ first-ever Black Republican female member when she won her first congressional election in 2014. The 45-year-old Love served two terms in Congress before she was narrowly defeated in 2018 by Democrat Ben McAdams, who racked up only 694 more votes than she did. She’s since worked as a political commentator for CNN. Love reacted to her guest-host stint by tweeting, “Really looking forward to kicking off a new season and honored to be a part of such an accomplished group.” Love will reportedly guest-host for the first week of The View’s 25th season. While the exact timeline after that is unclear, she’ll be followed by such well-known women as Condoleezza Rice, who served as Secretary of State under President George W. Bush, former FOX News anchor Gretchen Carlson, former Hewlett-Packard CEO-turned-presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, political pundits S.E. Cupp and Mary Katharine Ham, plus two women from the realm of reality TV: Eboni K. Williams, who has appeared on numerous FOX News programs in addition to being Real Housewives of New York City’s first-ever Black cast member in 2020, and ex-Real World: San Diego and Southern Charm star Cameran Eubanks. In addition, conservative commentator Ana Navarro will again appear as a View guest co-host throughout the season.
Why did Meghan McCain leave The View?
McCain said on the July 1 episode of TheView that a desire to be closer to family alongside husband Ben Domenech was the impetus behind her leaving. “This decision has taken a lot of thought and counsel… COVID has changed the world for all of us. And it changed the way, at least for me, the way I am looking at life, the way I am looking at living my life, the way I want my life to look like,” she explained. “I came to the D.C. area [while pregnant amid the pandemic] which is where my husband and I have always split time and it’s where I grew up splitting time and we have this incredible life here. We’re surrounded by my family, his family, by friends… I felt like I didn’t want to leave." While McCain has long been known to frequently butt heads with her View co-hosts, as recently as a few months before her surprise resignation, she insisted that she wasn’t stepping down. “Whether we like it or not, I’m not going anywhere on the show,” she told Andy Cohen in mid-January on Watch What Happens Live. “We’re all going to try and co-exist and I really want to have us all move forward.” And in 2019, ABC shut down rumors that McCain would be going away after The Daily Beast claimed she was “seriously considering calling it quits and not accepting ABC’s offer to return for The View’s 23rd season next September.”
Who will be on The View next season?
The rest of The View’s hosts from Season 24—Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin and Sara Haines—are all returning for Season 25. And when we say “returning,” we mean that literally: The panel will be back in the studio together for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic when Season 25 debuts on Sept. 7!
When does TheView Season 25 start?
Get ready for new episodes of The View starting Tuesday, Sept. 7 when Season 25 debuts at 11 a.m. ET live on ABC. Next, everything we know about Dancing With the Stars Season 30, including the first stars!