Whoopi Goldberg Insulted On The Set Of Her Show
An audience member on The View called Whoopi Goldberg an "old broad," which seems to be referencing the title of her recent book.
The term “legendary actor” gets thrown around a bit too much, but it’s a term that most definitely applies to Whoopi Goldberg. She has starred in everything from The Color Purple to Star Trek: The Next Generation, but these days, she spends most of her time serving as one of the hosts on The View. You might expect her to command plenty of respect on the set of her own show, but Deadline reports that an audience member recently called the veteran actor “an old broad.”
This had the potential to get very ugly. After all, this is Whoopi Goldberg’s own show, and most people in the audience are likely to be fans of her work. If the actor had decided to confront her potential heckler, most of the audience would probably have taken her side and turned the set into a chaotic scene.
Once Whoopi Goldberg incredulously asked “did you just call me an old broad,” there was a palpable tension as the audience waited to see if the legendary actor chose violence that day. Instead, Goldberg suddenly cracked a joke, saying that “I was like, hey, it’s Wednesday, and I am an old broad, and happy about it.” She followed this up with a more serious meditation on mortality, saying that “The alternative is not attractive to any of us” and that “We all want to be old broads and old dudes.”
On the surface level, this seems to be a masterclass in how a comedian handles a heckler. However, the real twist to this story is that the “heckler” was likely not a heckler at all but instead a major fan of Whoopi Goldberg. And “old broad” was likely not meant as a crack against Goldberg but instead a reference to her latest book.
Recently, Whoopi Goldberg teamed up with Doctor M.E. Hecht in order to write a helpful book. Hecht has many specialties, and she is considered an expert on the aging process. The two combined their knowledge to co-author a book that came out in November 2022 called Two Old Broads: Stuff You Need to Know That You Didn’t Know You Needed to Know.
So, while it’s impossible to know with absolute certainty, it is highly probable that the audience member who yelled out to Whoopi Goldberg is a major fan of the actor and the book itself. And she was likely hoping to get the actor’s attention by shouting out an ironic reference to the recent text instead of something more generic like “I love you.” However, despite Goldberg’s ironic title for the book, she didn’t connect the “old broad” comment to her writing and instead thought she was being insulted.
And while Whoopi Goldberg may be positioning herself as an expert on getting older in that new book, she certainly isn’t too old to still take on a variety of challenging roles. In addition to serving as a host on The View, the actor has recently starred in both Harlem and Godfather of Harlem as well as doing extensive voicework for animated features and appearing on Star Trek: Picard. If she is modeling how to age for the rest of us, it seems the advice may boil down to two words: stay busy.
