Garcelle Beauvais’ new memoir ‘Love Me As I Am’ is out now and in it she opens up about a ‘cringeworthy’ experience with Whoopi Goldberg.
via Page Six:
“I was shocked and appalled to see how testy Whoopi was with the show’s producers,” the “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star, 55, writes. “I was embarrassed and disappointed, to say the least. It was cringeworthy!”
Beauvais was asked to try out for a co-host position in the wake of Rosie O’Donnell’s exit from the ABC series. The model-turned-actress jumped at the chance to potentially fulfill her dream of becoming a talk show personality.
“Here I was the eager new kid in class and I ran smack dab into the reality of an uninviting workplace,” she recalls in her book, describing her interactions with Goldberg, Rosie Perez and Nicole Wallace.
“There was a brief nonchalant recognition that I was the co-host up to bat that week. No greetings or welcoming niceties, just a hey and they continued on with the [top-of-the-morning] meeting [with producers]. Okay.”
Beauvais thought she did “pretty well” on camera but couldn’t be sure as “nobody” talked to her afterward or provided any feedback.
“The energy was cold, unfriendly and standoffish,” she remembers. “The atmosphere was so opposite to my friendly nature and definitely not what I had expected or hoped for.”
Beauvais felt as through Goldberg, now 66, Perez, 57, and Wallace, 50, “contradicted” most of what she said on the show, so she switched up her strategy. Instead of giving her opinions too quickly, Beauvais “would just settle for piggybacking on whatever that said” — but, as she notes, “that didn’t work either.”
In the middle of making a point, Beauvais claims that Perez kicked her leg underneath the table: “It was s shut-the-f—k-up-bitch, you’re-talking-too-much signal kick!”
Later, off camera, Beauvais says Perez, “in her Brooklyn pitch,” told her, “’Girl, you know, I just wanted you to know that you needed to be quiet. I thought you were gonna go on too long. You know, we have a system here and we know when the other one is about to talk. So I just wanted to stop you from talking too much.’”
Beauvais then thought to herself, “What kind of system is that where grown women kick each other like f—king mules? Was this a new type of morse code or something? GTFOOH!”
The Bravolebrity — who went on to co-host “The Real” for some time — ultimately decided that the job was “not for [her],” she writes.
Beauvais explained to Page Six on Tuesday why she wanted to include the anecdote in “Love Me as I Am.”
“Because it happened! I’m not making this s–t up, you know what I mean?” she said with a laugh at “RHOBH” co-star Sutton Stracke’s “Cashmere & Caviar” party in West Hollywood. “If these stories happened and it’s my memoir, then I’m talking about it. It was unfortunate because I’m still such a fan and even still record the show.”
She added, “I love what they do. I think they’re smart, and I love the cast, especially now. I think Sunny [Hostin]’s great.”
Beauvais clarified that she thinks Goldberg is great, too — especially after they reunited to work together on “Caught in His Web,” a 2022 Lifetime movie starring Beauvais and executive produced by Goldberg.
“I got reintroduced to Whoopi, and I think sometimes you don’t get a second chance like that. Sometimes you have to be open for a reintroduction,” she said of reconnecting with the EGOT winner.
“She’s an icon. And I get that. I would never take away from her in terms of what she was able to do in the industry way before a lot of us. So kudos to her for that.”
Beauvais said she also made sure to give Goldberg a heads-up about what she wrote in her memoir.
“Of course I addressed it with Whoopi. She didn’t remember,” she told us. “But I told her because I didn’t want to go into the film like I was bamboozling her. That’s not my thing. So it was important that she knew that was in my book. We’re all good now.”
Still, Beauvais — who has yet to reestablish contact with Perez — told us that another audition for “The View” and subsequent move to New York City is out of the question.
“My kids live here [in Los Angeles],” said the mom of three, whose eldest son, Oliver, 31, resides in Las Vegas, while her twins, Jax and Jaid, 14, are local. “They’re in middle school, going into high school, and I don’t want to miss these years for anything in the world. There would have to be a crazy job for me to move.”
Now that “The Real” is over, Beauvais wouldn’t mind hosting a talk show of her own from the West Coast.
“That’s what I want more than anything — either late-night, daytime, any of it,” she said. “I would bring my authenticity, my realness and also my curiosity about people. I just love talking to people — and not just celebrities. Celebrities, we already know a little bit about what they’re like. I want to talk to real people.”
We wonder if Whoopi is going to respond…
