This past week, ABC announced that Marla Maples would be among the celebrities to compete on the upcoming season of Dancing with the Stars. Presumably, that is why the actress joined The View as a guest-host on Friday. But all moderator Joy Behar wanted to talk to Maples about was her six-year marriage to Donald Trump.
“Marla and I go back. I was at your wedding to Donald Trump,” Behar said at the very top of the show. As Maples joked in response, “Just yesterday.”
In reality, the wedding — Trump’s second of three — took place back in 1993. In addition to Behar, guests included Trump’s “nemesis” Rosie O’Donnell and a pre-murder trial O.J. Simpson. “I don’t even know how he got there, but he was there,” Maples said, laughing. Even back then, long before his current presidential run, Trump apparently showed some authoritarian tendencies, having security guards remove the film from Behar’s camera after she took a photo of the couple.
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“You were so in love with him, Marla, you were madly in love with him, I saw the headlines,” Behar told her guest before evoking Trump’s most outrageous debate moment to date. “Was it love or his hands? Tell the truth.”
“By the way, his hands are great,” Maples replied to awkward laughter from the audience. “I don't understand all this talk, he has great hands.” She quickly moved on to point out that Trump is the father of her child and wouldn’t be going into any more detail than that.
Soon, the discussion had moved on to Thursday night’s Republican debate in Miami and Ben Carson’s endorsement of Trump the following morning. In his remarks, Carson said there are “two Donald Trumps.” Behar wanted to know if Maples “found that to be true.”
“He’s a wonderful father, he loves his children,” Maples said, painting a different picture than the often crass and cruel Trump of the campaign trail. She also insisted that her ex-husband is “not racist.”
Throughout the hour, The View co-hosts kept prodding Maples to reveal little secrets or tidbits of personal information about his ex-husband, but she mostly declined. During a conversation about “hot doctors,” she was asked if Trump was OK with her seeing a handsome obstetrician. Maples said he was “fine” with it.
Overall, Maples resisted any urge she may have had to trash talk her ex-husband-turned-GOP presidential frontrunner on national television, mostly letting her friend Joy Behar do it for her.
“Why do I think that Donald would never be jealous of anybody, because he's the greatest, he's the most fabulous,” Behar joked. “Why would he be jealous of anyone, right?”
To that question, Maples just laughed politely.
Maples had more to say about her relationship with Trump when she spoke to Oprah Winfrey for an interview in 2013.
"I still love Donald," Maples told Winfrey. "I love Eric and Ivanka and Donnie so much. I had the chance to know them when they were young and now to see how well they're doing just touches my heart. We watch The Apprentice and I cry when I see the kids on it. I'm crazy, I'm that emotional person."
After they divorced in 1999, Maples said she raised their daughter as a “single parent.” She added, "Her daddy of course took care of school, her education, and some of our needs, but as far as the day-to-day parenting, I've been the one here."
