A Familiar Face Is Coming Back To The View Next Season

"The View" first aired in 1997 with a panel of women co-hosts with different political and cultural perspectives talking about the hot-button issues of the day. The first season's co-hosts were Barbara Walters, Meredith Vieira, Star Jones, Joy Behar, and Debbie Matenopoulos. One memorable, if somewhat short-lived, co-host was Rosie O'Donnell. She was the "Hot Topics" moderator on the show in 2006, but she left after less than a season. She returned in 2014, but she also left before that season was over. More than 10 years after she last left the show, O'Donnell is set to come back to "The View" for Season 30, though not as a host.

On an August 2026 episode of the podcast "The Tangle with Kyle Ridley," O'Donnell said, "I will go on the 30th anniversary next year and be on in whatever way they want me, just as a guest." She's not the only familiar face set to come back. "They're bringing back all the hosts, I think, for the 30th season," O'Donnell added.

Her return to the set is bound to be an interesting one. O'Donnell was a part of some of the arguments on "The View" that went too far, sparring perhaps most notably with former co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck. However, it wasn't just the conservative Hasselbeck that O'Donnell had issues with. One of the wildest feuds between "The View" co-hosts was the one between O'Donnell and Whoopi Goldberg. Even with all the drama that happened on set, O'Donnell still had kind words about "The View." "I'm pretty proud of that show," she told Ridley. "It really speaks to the people and to politics, and that was not the case when I first joined." O'Donnell did help pioneer the political edge at "The View."

On "The Tangle with Kyle Ridley," Rosie O'Donnell opened up about her issues with Whoopi Goldberg back in 2014, and how her expectations didn't match reality. "I have respect for her and I expected that we would be like Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan passing the ball back and forth and then shooting and leading the team to victory," O'Donnell said. "But that's not exactly what happened."

O'Donnell did confirm that she and Goldberg have made up in the years since.  However, she does still seem to have some lingering issues with Elisabeth Hasselbeck after their big on-screen blow up in 2007, which led O'Donnell to leaving the show. In 2025 when O'Donnell was asked on the Australian radio show "Ricki-Lee & Tim" (at the time called "Ricki-Lee, Tim & Joel") about what happened between her and Hasselbeck, O'Donnell said, "The whole thing I think was a set-up," referring to the split-screen fight that the two of them got into. She also noted how much she'd tried to be friends with Hasselbeck.

Hasselbeck didn't like that take, and the conservative co-host took to Fox News and her Instagram Stories, referring to O'Donnell as someone "who time and time again wants to spread lies and hate" in the latter (via Entertainment Weekly). O'Donnell fired back with her own Instagram post directed to Hasselbeck, saying in part, "Hate to tell you, I don't really think about you that much until an interviewer asks me." We'll have to wait and see if the two of them make appearances together on the 30th season of "The View." Hasselbeck and O'Donnell did come back together for Barbara Walters' last season in 2014 without any drama, but with last year's social media spat, another reunion could be more exciting.