Whoopi Goldberg Makes Emotional Return to ‘The View’

Whoopi Goldberg Returns to The View on Thursday, March 14, 2019 after a long illness. (Credit: YouTube/The View)

Whoopi Goldberg is back on The View.

A month after taking time off, the 63-year-old briefly returned to the show Thursday for an emotional reunion with her fellow co-hosts.

Goldberg — who was near death following a serious bout of pneumonia — surprised her co-workers, who were under the impression she wouldn’t return until next week. As Joy Behar told the audience her co-host would be back “soon,” Goldberg walked out on stage to cheers.

Once Behar and the other co-hosts noticed Goldberg’s presence, they ran over to give her a bunch of hugs. “You can never leave me again,” co-host Meghan McCain teased her friend, while Behar added, “We are shocked.”

The Hollywood veteran then addressed the audience and explained why she has been absent from the show. “So this is my first foray out,” she said. “I’m not there yet. I know that.”

She continued: “I still have a cough and that’s the last thing to go. Over the next week and a half, I will start to be here more often … I really kind of missed y’all.”

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Goldberg also touched on how serious her condition was, stating: “There’s death, and here’s me. You think you can push through because you’ve got a little cold. You think because you’ve healed quickly before that, something crazy can’t happen, Well, it can. Double pneumonia and sepsis. They had to pump a lot of stuff out of me.”

She added: “You must really take care of yourself,” she said. “There’s little tiny stuff out there that will kill you that you never think of.”

After recounting the frightening parts of her ordeal, the co-host took aim at the medical insurance industry.

“One of the things I discovered is your insurance really doesn’t do much for you,” she said. “And the people who are saying ‘no’ to you are not doctors, they are people looking at algorithms. It got me to thinking, why is it that I have been paying insurance for over 60 years and it hasn’t rolled over? Who told them they could use that money when I wasn’t using it?”

Although Goldberg’s doctor cleared her surprise visit, she won’t return to The View just yet. The television personality is set to return to the show Monday, her health permitting.