‘The View’ Cohosts Forced to Evacuate From the Show’s NYC Set as Fire Rages Next Door
Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin and Alyssa Farah Griffin had to evacuate the building prior to going on the air. The fire initially broke out next door at the studio in which The Tamron Hall Show is filmed.
Once fire fighters handled the fire, The View hosts were permitted to reenter the building and get ready for the episode. As a nod to the experience, they walked out onto the show’s set to Billy Joel‘s 1989 hit “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”
“This morning we had to evacuate the studio because there was a fire that we did not start,” Whoopi, 68, explained to the audience. “We do not know who started it, we do not know what started it.”
It was a bit obvious that everyone was rattled from the experience.
“It really made me understand my priorities, because once I saw all the hosts were fine, I was like, ‘Where’s my glam team?’” Alyssa, 34, told the audience after the scary experience. “Like, leave [executive producer Brian Teta], but as long as hair and makeup is safe.’”
Whoopi revealed that she immediately had one thing in mind before heading outside with the rest of her costars.
“I grabbed my purse,” the Sister Act actress admitted. “When that happens, as you’re evacuating, you snatch up your [purse] cause that’s your ID!”
Host Ana Navarro was actually traveling in to NYC from Miami when the fire broke out. She was not in the show’s studio during the evacuation and was instead joining a meeting via Zoom at the time.
“I was coming in from the airport and there was a ‘Hot Topics’ meeting so I pressed the Zoom link, thinking I would find all of you on the Zoom, and it was dark, empty, and alarm and flashing lights,” she told her colleagues during the broadcast. “I thought, ‘Holy hell.’”
Tamron Hall later announced that Wednesday’s episode of her show was canceled due to the fire. The cause of the fire was determined to be kitchen grease that ignited in an on-set kitchen.
“Hi everybody, welcome to the show,” she said in a statement. “I know this looks a little different around here. I am in fact live in front of a black screen because we have had something happen that’s never happened in the five seasons of the the show. We are not able to air the show scheduled for today.”
