“She had made a promise to my father that she would look after me, and she kept her word for the first two years that I was on the show,” Meghan wrote. “The thing about Whoopi, though, is that she yields so much power in culture and television, and once she turns on you, it can create unfathomable tension at the table. I found her open disdain for me more and more difficult to manage as the years went on and it became more frequent.”
Meghan went on to name two incidents where they disagreed on-air that instantly went viral, with the most notable one of Whoopi simply answering back to Meghan with an “O.K.” In a follow-up interview with Variety, Meghan said that Whoopi later apologized for one of their on-camera clashes. Whoopi herself addressed their heated debate during the opening of a 2019 episode.
“Things get heated on this show,” Whoopi said at the time. “If you watch the show you know this has happened over the years. We’re really passionate, this is our job. We come in, we talk to each other, sometimes we’re not as polite as we could be. That’s just the way it is.”
“But you’re going to be dealing with the same thing when you’re sitting around your table with your family and you don’t agree or somebody says something and goes off the rails,” she continued. “This is part of what we do. This is not an indication that women can’t sit around and talk. This is not an indication that we don’t know how to deal with each other on camera, this is happening in real time. Stuff happens on this show in real time and everybody, you know, wherever you sit in all this, don’t assume that you, that we’re over here with butcher knives under the table, you know? It just doesn’t work that way.”