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A View to a Kill

Wednesday, June 28, 2006 01:30 AM

Star Jones Reynolds will not be appearing on The View today – or possibly ever again. The shit has finally hit the fan.

The suits at ABC have wanted to axe Star Jones Reynolds from the hen party that is The View for a very long time, after research showed Viewers were becoming less and less enamored of the formally fat egomaniac, but head hen Barbara Walters wanted to protect Star's feelings through the delicate and protracted removal process. "They wanted us to tell Star in December," Walters says in a New York Times piece today. "I said, 'I won't do it before Christmas.' Then in January her book was coming out. I didn't want to hurt her book. Then she told me in February she was having an operation. I didn't want her to go under the knife with all this stress." But now that Reynolds has jumped the gun, announcing on the show yesterday instead of tomorrow that she would be leaving, and simultaneously telling People that she felt she'd been fired, Walters has removed the kid gloves and put on the latex pair so as not to get viscera on her hands as she tears Reynolds apart. "I love Star," she told the Associated Press yesterday, "and I was trying to do everything I possibly could – up until this morning when I was betrayed – to protect her."

Walters doesn't like surprises, and she and the other co-hosts on The View were caught off-guard when Reynolds abruptly interrupted a chat about air conditioning to announce her upcoming exit. "I was totally surprised," Walters tells Lloyd Grove in today's New York Daily News. He describes her voice as having the temperature of liquid nitrogen. "We had been together for hours before the program. Everyone was surprised. There had been an agreement between Star and me that she would make an announcement this Thursday. The agreement was made many weeks ago that she would stay on the program till late July, and whatever reasons she wanted to give, I would back her up and give her a wonderful send-off.... I have always told the truth on this program, except in the case of Star. The network decided long ago not to renew her contract. Her contract is with the network, not with me. I was trying to protect Star and her sensitivities. She has, after all, been on the program."