After playing into the conspiracy theories surrounding Kate Middleton, and even jokingly asking a medium to locate her, the hosts of “The View” were solemn and apologetic on Monday morning after the reveal of the Princess of Wales’ cancer diagnosis. The ABC hosts were also quick to give Whoopi Goldberg credit for telling them not to get sucked in.
In a new video posted on Friday, the royal revealed that she has been diagnosed with cancer and begun “preventative” chemotherapy after cancer had been found following her abdominal surgery at the start of this year.
The diagnosis drew sympathy for Middleton and her family, but also massive regret online from those who played into conspiracy theories about her wellbeing.
The hosts of “The View” were among them, and on Monday morning, their immediate response to the news was “Whoopi was right.”
“I felt awful, to be honest,” Alyssa Farah Griffin said. “Whoopi was right. And I’m guilty of having gotten into the fun of ‘Where’s Kate?’ and sort of thinking it’s funny, and sharing the memes, and playing into that. And I forgot something fundamental that we all know, which is every person, whether they’re a princess, somebody in a high privileged position, or just the person next to you is dealing with personal struggles that we don’t know about.”
“I send my love to her, and strength to her, because sure, the palace totally mishandled the PR of this, but the public mishandled it. We didn’t give her an ounce of — not we, you did,” Farah Griffin added, motioning to Goldberg. “A lot of other people didn’t. I didn’t think about there’s something more serious here that she’s dealing with. And I feel awful over it.”
Sunny Hostin agreed, first joking that it was Farah Griffin and Sara Haines’ fault for pulling her down the rabbit hole, but then getting serious and admitting she’s “deeply remorseful.”
Meanwhile, Ana Navarro considered it “a teachable moment.”
“The lesson I learned was, when Whoopi Goldberg tells me to mind my own damn business, I will mind my own damn business from now on,” she said.
Indeed, Goldberg previously went off on the conspiracy theories surrounding the princess, saying that the public feeding into the theories only encouraged them.
“It’s our fault, because we bought into this,” she said at the time. “When you buy into this stuff, when they start doing it to your family, or they start doing it to your kids, it’s not cute. It’s not fun, and it really irritates me.”
You can watch the full discussion from “The View” in the video above.