Whoopi Goldberg Blasts ‘The View’ Crew Before Mocking ‘Golden Bachelor’ Mel Owens

Whoopi Goldberg made it clear she was less than thrilled to cover The Golden Bachelor — or his controversial comments —during the Thursday, September 25 episode of The View.

The long-running cohost returned from a commercial break and sarcastically teared up as she introduced a segment about the dating show, which also airs on ABC, the parent network of The View.

“And this is really important that you all be aware of,” Goldberg said while pretending to cry, drawing laughs from the studio audience. She then presented a clip from the Golden Bachelor season 2 premiere that featured star Mel Owens explaining his past comments about preferring to date women between the ages of 45 and 60.

When the clip ended, Goldberg stumbled over the teleprompter script and accused someone off-camera of changing the text. “Did he… why did you change it?” she asked, prompting laughter from her cohost Alyssa Farah Griffin, who joked that the crew had swapped out the lines. Joy Behar jumped in to help, reading the prompt aloud until Goldberg was able to continue.

Weighing in on Owens’ comments, Goldberg said, “I find it very, very crazy that, at this point, people are still making those kinds of comments and saying them out loud.”

“I mean, you find it where you find it. It might be somebody who is a little bit older than you, it might be somebody who’s younger than you,” she continued. “Why not just say, I want to find somebody who fits with me and I fit with, as opposed to, they have to be this?”

Owens’ remarks first surfaced back in June when he appeared on the In the Trenches podcast, saying he would “cut” any contestant over the age of 60 and made jokes about “artificial hips and wigs.”

During the season 2 premiere of The Golden Bachelor, Owens addressed the backlash directly, admitting, “I messed up. I was wrong. I replay it in my head a lot. I have regrets, and I’m sorry for all the things I’ve said on the podcast. I know what a lot of people are thinking about me, but that’s not who I am.”

Goldberg ended the segment by moving the show to another commercial break after retrieving a note card she had dropped on the floor.

The View airs weekdays on ABC.