Sherri Shepherd reveals The View pay gap and Rosie O’Donnell’s push for higher contract
Shepherd recounts salary figures from 2007 negotiations on The View, detailing how Rosie O’Donnell advised a higher request and how the pay disparity contrasted with other co-hosts.
Sherri Shepherd says she and her fellow The View co-hosts were paid far less than their value when she joined The View in 2007, and Rosie O’Donnell helped illuminate the pay scale during negotiations. In a new interview with Vulture, Shepherd described how O’Donnell told her what everybody was making after media scrutiny intensified during contract talks. The numbers show a wide gap between offers and on-air salaries. O’Donnell was reportedly making about $2 million at the time, while Joy Behar and Elisabeth Hasselbeck were earning around $500,000, and Shepherd’s initial offer hovered near $400,000. The disclosure arrives amid broader discussion about compensation on daytime television and the leverage of long-running, high-profile shows.
Shepherd said the moment that mattered came when she pressed for more. They had offered me $400,000, she said. I eventually made a million, too. I always will credit Rosie O’Donnell for being free with that. O’Donnell, who had left The View in 2007 before Shepherd joined, reportedly advised her to aim for $2 million. Shepherd noted that while O’Donnell had left, her openness about salaries stuck with her and helped frame how she approached negotiations.
Shepherd’s time on The View included tensions with veteran co-hosts Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg. The on-air dynamic often placed her in the center of debates about opinion, decorum and hierarchy on a panel known for strong personalities. Everything that I learned not to do — don’t argue with your elders, don’t debate — was something I had to do every day with Whoopi Goldberg and Barbara Walters right there, she said. On her last day, Walters told her she loved her and that she had learned the most.
Behar and Hasselbeck remained part of the show through various seasons; Shepherd’s departure in 2014 came as the show evolved with new co-hosts and guest panelists. She credits the experience with shaping her career and notes that the salaries reflected not only individual negotiations, but the broader television economy of daytime talk.
The interview also provides a comparative snapshot with Kathy Griffin, who was reportedly offered about $1.4 million in the early 2000s to join the show full-time. The figures illustrate how pay scales could vary widely for women in daytime television during that era. Shepherd hosted The View for seven seasons, from 2007 to 2014, before her exit, and O’Donnell returned to the program in 2014 after her own departure; the pay dynamics of that period remain part of the broader conversation about compensation and power in entertainment.