Meghan McCain says“ The View ”made her miserable, compares her exit to 'bomb going off' on set

Meghan McCain, the People's Princess of Arizona, invoked The Devil Wears Prada while discussing her bombastic 2021 exit from The View.

The 39-year-old conservative and former View panelist revealed on the latest episode of her Meghan McCain Has Entered the Chat podcast that leaving the daily talk show two years ago proved difficult for six months, as she attempted "disconnecting" from the "adrenaline rush" of being on live TV each day.

"For me, being on The View and being around so many people who've been on TV daily, for decades, I was like, I cannot live my life on camera like this anymore, because it's bad for me. It's bad for me emotionally," she told her guest, journalist Brian Stelter, elaborating that she weighed the decision for physical reasons as well, explaining that she had "multiple" miscarriages in the past.

"I just felt like I could not be the kind of mother, wife, and commentator I wanted to be in that kind of a chaotic environment. I didn't want to be the type of person that couldn't live without being on TV every day — and I, too, questioned, when I left, if I could live without it, and then I was just so happy that I didn't have to wear makeup every day."

McCain, daughter of late Republican Senator John McCain, went on to reveal what happened the day she told The View staff that she wanted to leave the program after first joining the Hot Topics table in 2017.

"When I left The View — and I quit, it was very dramatic — it was like a bomb going off, when I was going into the studio to announce that I was leaving," she explained. "My entire body was trembling. I couldn't get my body to stop because I was having a physical reaction. I didn't know how people would respond. I didn't know if I was doing the right thing, and then even my agent at the time was like, 'If you're going to pull this rip cord, you need to make sure you're pulling this rip cord, and you're ready to do whatever.'"

She finished the sentiment by comparing the job to The Devil Wears Prada, a film that stars Anne Hathaway as an aspiring journalist who works for a toxic, demanding magazine editor played by Meryl Streep.

"Working on The View is a big job, people watch it, but for me, it was like in The Devil Wears Prada where it's like, 'a million girls want this job,'" she said, referencing an iconic quote from the movie. "What I thought I wanted was the most miserable I was in my entire life."

EW has reached out to a representative for The View for comment.

ABC Meghan McCain on 'The View'

McCain famously quit The View shortly after she engaged in an intense on-air clash with Joy Behar, who informed McCain that she "did not" miss her cohost on the air following McCain's maternity leave.

On McCain's final episode, she called working on The View "one of the greatest, most exhilarating wonderful privileges of my entire life," though she regularly trashes the show — including in an incendiary essay for the Daily Mail earlier this year, in which she said her departure was akin to a "very nasty breakup with an infamous ex-boyfriend" and admitted to burning bridges by speaking out.

Listen to McCain discuss The View on Meghan McCain Has Entered the Chat above.

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