"The View" is adding more star power to its table this fall. Barbara Walters on Monday announced that model and actress Jenny McCarthy is joining the show this fall when it kicks off its 17th season.
"We are delighted that Jenny will be joining us as a permanent co-host on 'The View' starting in September," Walters said in a statement. "Jenny brings us intelligence as well as warmth and humor. She can be serious and outrageous. She has connected with our audience and offers a fresh point of view. Jenny will be a great addition to the show as we usher in an exciting new chapter for 'The View.' "
McCarthy has appeared on the talk-show 17 times, including eight as a guest co-host.
"I look forward to helping make hot topics a little bit hotter, and showing my mom that my interrupting skills have finally paid off," McCarthy said in a statement.
"I will be doing everything I can to provoke conversation, make you think, make you laugh and maybe even spill the beans on what goes on backstage (like if I accidentally barge into Bradley Cooper’s dressing room in a towel)," she also wrote in a blog post on the Chicago Sun Times' website.
The addition of McCarthy to the show is not without controversy. The actress has been outspoken about her belief that vaccines cause autism, a claim that is not supported by scientific studies. She believes that the mumps, measles and rubella vaccine her son, Evan, received was responsible for his autism. Even before ABC announced that McCarthy was joining the show, concerns about her addition surfaced online, with Salon writing last week that she's "pretty friggin' nuts."
Sitting alongside Walters and McCarthy at "The View" table in the new season will be Whoopi Goldberg and Sherri Shepherd. Longtime co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck announced last week that she was leaving the show and is joining "Fox & Friends" in the fall, and Joy Behar revealed in March that she would not return after her contract expires in August.
The show will also soon be losing veteran TV journalist Walters, who in May said that she would "retire from appearing on television at all" in 2014.
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