Talk show hosts Sherri Shepherd and Joy Behar spilled hot tea on Sherri’s Oct. 11 episode regarding the late Barbara Walters and actor Richard Pryor.
As the two reminisced on the seven years they worked together as The View co-stars, Shepherd shared she feared Walters and her “formidable” mien and claimed Behar knew and liked that she feared her.
The 56-year-old former The View co-host facetiously called out Behar’s ineptitude to keep a lid on juicy gossip.
“Thing about it is I would tell you stuff, and then you would go and tell it,” Sherri stated. “Joy and I would shut down a restaurant. We have such a good time, but…I never told this before. I’m going to tell. I told Joy I had run into Paul Mooney, and Paul Mooney had said that he caught Barbara Walters with Richard Pryor.”
Behar questioned if Shepherd meant Walters “slept with” Pryor, and the Sherri host confirmed.
“Yes, that’s what Paul Mooney said. And I came back, and I was like, ‘Joy, guess what,'” the 56-year-old host recalled. “When you talk like that, you know… Don’t tell nobody. And I came out, and I told you. I said, ‘Paul Mooney said he caught Barbara with Richard Pryor. He walked in on them.’ And then I was like, ‘Don’t tell nobody.'”
Behar acted like it was the first time she heard this.
“He looked through the door… don’t act like you don’t remember!” Shepherd told the 81-year-old TV personality.
The Mr. Iglesias actress reiterated that the conversation was between her and Joy at the time, and she instructed her to keep it between them.
“The next day, Barbara walks in, and you go…” Shepherd started to say before Behar cut in to defend herself, claiming she didn’t tell Walters that Shepherd told her.
“No, you didn’t, but she says something like, ‘So, you slept with Richard Pryor, huh?'”
The View host asked about Walter’s reaction, and Shepherd said the late journalist swiveled her head abruptly and asked, “Who told you that?”
“And I’m sitting there, like I had just got this job,” Shepherd exclaimed, adding Behar spilled the dirt to Walters because she wasn’t scared of her.
The tea got hotter when the former Joy Behar: Say Anything! star disclosed that Walters had jungle fever.
“Between you and me, Barbara liked a ‘brother,'” she said, referring to Black men. “She was going out with a Black senator…is this going to be on television?”
Behar garnered laughter and applause from the audience.
Shepherd didn’t have a picture of Walters with the Black senator but confirmed it was true.
“You always used to say Barbara loved a chocolate man,” Shepherd commented. “Colin Powell was her crush. Every time Colin Powell came on, Barbara was all the way over here [close to him].”
Walters died at 93 on Dec. 30, 2022, Mooney at 79 on May 19, 2021 and Pryor at 65 on Dec. 10, 2005.
Mooney revealed Walter and Pryor’s steamy romance while guest appearing on Howard Stern’s show.
Although the audio clip has been erased from the web, many remember Mooney revealing Walters and Pryor slept together on Howard Stern’s show in 2006. A caller asked Paul about his reaction to Walters denying the rumors, and Paul responded that he wasn’t going to argue with “the lady.”
There is a clip online of the end of the interview where Stern expressed uncertainty about the validity of the comedian’s claims, and Mooney blurted out that he had photos of the two (Walters and Pryor).
“Butt naked photos,” Mooney confirmed. “I bet I could sell those on the internet.”
He also alleged that Pryor and journalist Connie Chung were once together.
