Meghan McCain has put The View in her rearview mirror — but there’s one department that still holds a place in her heart.
“I still miss the wardrobe people,” McCain, 38, told The Messenger in an interview published on Friday, October 13. “I just love getting dressed up. So I miss the wardrobe people the most and they’re very kind. They have been the wardrobe people the entire history of the show.”
McCain, who exited the talk show in 2021, revealed that she doesn’t “watch it at all” since closing that chapter of her career. “Partly it’s just because of my lifestyle,” the “Meghan McCain Has Entered the Chat” podcast host explained. “I don’t have time to watch this kind of content. I do listen to a lot of podcasts.”
She joked that tuning into The View isn’t good for her health. “And you know, it’s kind of like looking at an ex-boyfriend’s Instagram — it’s just not great for you. So no, I don’t watch,” McCain quipped.
The journalist was a cohost on the ABC series from 2017 to 2021, during which time she raised eyebrows for her outspoken views and continual headbutting with several cohosts, including Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg.
Following her July 2021 exit announcement, McCain detailed the reason behind her decision in her April 2022 memoir, Bad Republican. “I had a lot of good memories on the show, and it was a privilege to be part of such an iconic piece of TV history,” she wrote, but noted that “there’s stuff that happens on The View that shouldn’t be allowed.”
McCain claimed: “For whatever reason, there’s a deep level of misogyny about the way The View is covered and written about in the media, where tabloids are always writing about the co-hosts hating each other backstage. … My take on the show is that working at The View brings out the worst in people. I believe that all the women and the staff are working under conditions where the culture is so f—ked up, it feels like quicksand.”
The TV personality told Variety that the set felt “extremely isolating” for her as the sole Republican on the show during the president Donald Trump years. Her father’s declining health also played a factor in her ability to show up and work in the uncomfortable environment. (Former senator John McCain died in August 2018 after a battle with brain cancer. He was 81.)
“I was there less than a month when the first article came out about me, about what a disappointment I was and my nickname backstage was ‘Elsa the ice princess’ [from Frozen],” Meghan recalled to Variety. “My dad was dying of glioblastoma. I got permission from the network to take every other Friday off to go home to Arizona and help him get treatment. If I was cold, with this giant show with a group of strangers, I was trying to do well. There were never bad stories leaked about anyone else, and there was certainly bad behavior that could have leaked.”
Earlier this year, Meghan vowed that The View was in her past, writing in an April article for The Daily Mail, “There is nothing on God’s green earth that could convince me to ever walk on that set again.”
She further claimed: “The only way to survive on that show is to be vanilla pudding. Say nothing controversial with the elites, bow down, and don’t actually do the job you were hired to do, which is voice your authentic opinions.”