Nicole Wallace was let go from The View about a month ago, and is now opening up about the unprofessional way in which it all went down.
Wallace learned about her termination from an article in Variety magazine, and in a follow-up interview with the same publication, she is now revealing how shocked she was to learn about it in such a manner.
“They never called me,” she exclaims. “I had never heard one note from anybody inside the entire organization during the entire season. No one said a word to me… It was like being invisible.” She continued, “The night [Variety’s] story ran, they summoned my agent and told me they’d like to consider me for a contributor’s role, and they also made me an offer at ABC News to do the conventions and debates.”
All of this, seemingly out of nowhere, the former George W. Bush communications chief was blindsided and the part-time, seems a lot like damage control commentary gig they offered her, she wasn’t interested in. “If it had been two days a week or enough time to have more of a presence, I’d consider it,” she said of the offer. “They weren’t interested in negotiating with me. It didn’t make sense for me.”
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Wallace had been brought on the show to be the resident conservative Republican and provide the viewpoint of and take stances for the far right. But according to ABC, Wallace was “not offering enough dissent about political issues and continually voicing her lack of knowledge about celebrities.”
Wallace quipped back in July when the firing was still a rumor, saying, “They called me Kardashian illiterate.”
There were rumors that the axing stemmed from friction between Wallace and fellow former cohost Rosie O’Donnell, but Wallace claims that while volatile, her relationship with O’Donnell never reached a fever pitch. Wallace’s comments about her former coworker were — not surprisingly — pretty politically correct.
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She said about O’Donnell (who exited the show in January for health reasons), “She was really intense, and that intensity could really be uncomfortable… And listen, maybe this is where I failed in the eyes of the executives who hired me. Maybe this combustion is what they were seeking.”
O’Donnell oftentimes was viewed by the public as being a little too abrasive in her opinions, to the chagrin, one would think, of the executives. But given this information, maybe it was exactly what they were looking for and Wallace wasn’t giving them enough heat.
And though the manner in which things unfolded seems unprofessional from the outside, Wallace maintains there are no hard feelings. She says, “I don’t wish them anything but roaring success. But it’s sort of like a breakup. If you’re dating the quarterback and then you go out with the hockey player, you just go to the hockey games. I don’t think I’ll still go to the football games.”
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