Joy Behar unwittingly blabbed on air about her fellow The View host Sara Haines’ “lesbian relationship” in college Wednesday—as Haines’ parents watched from the audience.
Near the end of the show, co-host Whoopi Goldberg was previewing Haines' appearance alongside her parents on the show’s Behind the Table podcast when Behar interjected.
“I have to ask her a question,” Behar said, turning to Haines. “Are you going to bring up that lesbian relationship you said you had, back at Smith [College]?”
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Haines burst out laughing, while the other co-hosts appeared flabbergasted. The camera quickly cut to Haines’ parents sitting in the studio audience, her father slack-jawed and her mother smirking.
“Dad, earmuffs! Earmuffs!” Haines said, looking to her father, with her hands over her ears.
“That was off-air that she told us that,” co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin reminded Behar, while co-host Sunny Hostin wryly observed: “Now it’s on-air.”
Haines quickly made light of the awkward moment. “It’s a good thing my dad doesn’t always watch,” she said. “But now he does.”
Haines—who attended a famously gay women’s liberal arts college in Northampton, Massachusetts (itself a queer haven)—has been married to Max Shifrin, a lawyer (and a man), since 2014.
It isn’t the first time Behar has shown a fascination with same-sex relationships, and the other instance also involved Haines.
In June, the 81-year-old commentator was asked by a guest, comedian Sandra Bernhard, who is gay, if Behar herself had ever “gotten it on with a lady.”
Ever unfiltered, Behar responded, “No, but someday I will,” and when Bernhard told her she had to “hurry up,” Behar added: “I’ll do it in my nineties!”
Moments later, Behar roped Haines into the hysterics, after the younger co-host admitted she had been to a lesbian bar in Manhattan.
“You have? I didn’t see you there!” Behar joked. “She’s a closet lipstick lesbian!”
