Is Rosie O’Donnell Returning to The View?

With The View in the news this week after Jenny McCarthy and Sherri Shepherd publicly discussed their departures from the show following the end of this season while on the air, questions arise as to who will take their spots behind the table. The next season of the popular talk show is sure to be a good one, considering half the co-hosts left this year, including the creator of the show, Barbara Walters. Rumors are now swirling that none other than Rosie O’Donnell, former co-host on The View will return next season.

O’Donnell famously left the show after co-hosting during 2006 and 2007 after she argued with former View co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Hasselbeck left the show last year to take a job co-hosting FOX & Friends, and it appears that O’Donnell might be ready to return to her old chair. O’Donnell has allegedly been speaking with The View producers since the beginning of the year about a return to the show next season. Ironically, the news comes from Hasselbeck herself.

“I do believe this has been in the works for a long, long time. She walked around with a lot of control. And then when I had the chance to talk to her, Rosie herself told me, on set while we were mic-ed up, that she produced the reunion show to have everybody together and that it was her idea. Now, do you think the woman who left the way that she did would be producing Barbara’s goodbye show? Here’s the shocker, it was actually her, ‘Hello Show,” Hasselbeck said on television this week of O’Donnell’s involvement with Barbara Walter’s final appearance on The View.

ABC, however, has neither confirmed nor denied Hasselbeck’s theory. Their reps only maintain that the view will make some exciting changes in the upcoming season and that they have no current announcements to make about anything to do with the show.

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