Whoopi Goldberg is not in the business of spilling Elizabeth Taylor’s business on national television, thank you very much.
The View moderator and Oscar-winning actress comically refused cohost Ana Navarro’s inquiry into Taylor’s personal life on Monday’s episode of the talk show, as the panelists broke down headlines concerning estranged couple Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck reuniting over the weekend for a family brunch outing.
The Hot Topic kicked off with Sunny Hostin estimating that “true love has returned” following Lopez and Affleck’s reunion, after she “thought true love was dead” in the wake of the couple’s recent divorce news. The chat prompted Navarro to ask Goldberg about Taylor, whom Goldberg was close with before the Hollywood legend died in 2011.
“You were very good friends with Elizabeth Taylor, right?” Navarro asked her colleague. “She and Richard Burton got married and divorced twice. Did she ever get over Richard Burton? Wasn’t that flame always kind of lit until he died?”
Sara Haines attempted to move the discussion along, also asking Goldberg, “Did she share it with you?” while turning to look at the Ghost star.
“Yes, she did,” Goldberg replied. “But I’m not going to share it with you.”
The audience laughed at Goldberg’s response, with Alyssa Farah Griffin quipping, “In what world would Whoopi tell us?”
Goldberg refocused her point, though, as she has long cautioned her cohosts against speculating on the personal lives of celebrities on their mainstream platform — including in March, when the cohosts admitted that Goldberg was correct when she refused to discuss conspiracy theories regarding the whereabouts of Kate Middleton, as it was eventually revealed that the Princess of Wales had been diagnosed with cancer.
“It’s difficult because people like us sit around and we judge it, and we don’t think to ourselves, well, maybe we just say how nice that they were hanging out together. Because the kids hear all of this. People see all of this, and it is very difficult to figure out what’s going on in somebody else’s relationship,” Goldberg said. “So I’m assuming that they went out because the kids wanted to go out and everybody was doing their thing. If you’re happy with your family, you’re affectionate with them. It doesn’t mean that you’re going home with them again. It just means I’m not so mad at you that I can’t sit across from you.”
