Raven-Symone appeared on a recent podcast and revealed that when she was being pitched to become a host on The View, she felt like she “just got catfished”—essentially saying that she was lured into a TV relationship under false pretenses.
Symone, who made her mark as a child actor on The Cosby Show and Disney’s That’s So Raven, says producers of The View gave her a skewed version of what her stint on the show would be like by selling her a technicolor dream of a “fun and exciting” pop culture gig.
However, once former President Donald Trump entered the fray as a candidate, the topics became more politically intense—and Symone says she didn’t anticipate that.
According to Yahoo Entertainment, earlier this week on Monday, Symone appeared on The View: Behind the Table with another former host of The View, Candace Cameron Bure. Both former hosts stated that what was discussed before both joined the daytime talk show differed from their experience while appearing on the ABC show. The daily conversations of politics were not what either had in mind when they were both individually pitched to join the gabfest.
After Bure had stated that she “never spoken publicly about politics.” She was told that the show would “talk more about family and sex and life.” Raven-Symone chimed in and agreed with that sentiment.
“Sara, I got catfished. I feel like I just got catfished,” Symoné said. “I thought I was going on a show, like Candace, where it was pop culture and fun and exciting, and I got catfished, and I learned a good lesson.”
Symoné also realized that she was the only woman on the panel who was part of the LGBTQ+ community.
“Outwardly, the pressure I felt was the LGBTQ+ community, because I was the only one on the panel with that label. And I’m not a fan of holding an entire community on my shoulders, because again . . . like Candace said, even in your own community, people will get mad at you. So I really didn’t like that. And so, on an everyday basis, I knew what I was there for — to represent that slice of life, but when I was speaking, I blacked that part out because I knew that it would inhibit me from being myself. And it would inhibit me from actually speaking my truth because I’m worried about other people.”
Both women left the show in 2016 but credited producers and Whoopi Goldberg for helping them get through it.