Meredith Vieira Says View Hosts Were 'Angry' They Couldn't Be Honest About Star Jones' Weight Loss

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Star Jones got candid about her regrets from her time on The View when she reunited with her original co-hosts last month to celebrate the ABC talk show's 25th anniversary.

In video of the May sit-down that aired on Thursday's episode, the 60-year-old lawyer and television personality revealed to Meredith Vieira, Joy Behar and Debbie Matenopoulos that she wished she had been honest about some of her mental and physical health struggles.

"I regret that I was not strong enough to admit that I was in a depression and really ill about my health," she said. "I really regret that I just wasn't there."

Jones has been frank throughout the years following her The View exit in 2006 about struggling with her weight, which slowly increased during the first six seasons of show. "I was morbidly obese," she said on Tamron Hall in 2020. "I wasn't fluffy, I wasn't plus size, I wasn't overweight — I was dying. I was 307 lbs."

Despite being blunt about everything else in her life, Jones did not confide the truth about her mental state to audiences or to her View co-hosts.

"I remember you said to me, 'It would have been great if someone said, Star, you need to lose weight, you're unhealthy,' " Behar, 79, recalled during their reunion segment. "And I said, 'Star, if I said that to you, you would have bit my head off' and you said, 'Yes, I would have!' "

"We were worried," Vieira, 68, added.

Steve Fenn/ABC Season 1 of The View

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Jones went on to have gastric bypass surgery in 2003, though she never revealed it on The View, instead saying she was given "a medical intervention" and using the show to point to the benefits of diet and exercise. She hid the truth for years before admitting in 2007 to having the procedure, and claimed in a Glamour essay at the time that she only concealed what happened because she was "scared of what people might think."

That left Jones' View co-stars frustrated.

"To be honest, [we were] a little bit angry at the dialogue because we felt, 'This isn't honest,' " Vieira said.

"She was in tremendous denial and we had to pretend it was something other than it was," Behar added. "We didn't like that. We were told, 'Well you have to be an actress,' and it's like, 'We don't get paid to be an actress.' We were uncomfortable with that."

RELATED: Joy Behar Reflects on Lying About Star Jones' Weight Loss on The View

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All these years later, Jones is able to look back at the experience from a better place. "My greatest achievement is that I'm healthier now than I have been in my whole life," she said.

"You have grown tremendously since then," Behar told her. "It's good that you've come this far."

"I have to give her credit. Star never ever talked about her weight issue like that," Behar added to the audience, joking to View's current panel of co-hosts that her only regret about the show is related to her bank account. "I should have asked for more money right form the top! This show is a hit! They've been nickel-and-diming me for years!"

RELATED: Star Jones Says Her View Costars Tried to Ruin Her Reputation by Leaking Gastric Bypass Surgery

Jimi Celeste/Patrick McMullan/Getty Star Jones

Elsewhere during the reunion, the O.G. View panel praised Barbara Walters for giving them the jobs that would go on to change their lives.

"One thing that Barbara does not get enough credit for: she raised the whole conversation of diversity and put it on television," Jones said. "She made sure that everybody heard the opinion of an overweight Black woman."

"I'm a better journalist because of her," Jones continued. "I ask questions. I hear myself parodying something she would say. She taught me about the follow up question."

Matenopoulos agreed. "She expected out of us the same she put into something," the 47-year-old host shared, of Walters. "She's like, 'I work hard, and you should work just as hard.' And I respect that."

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Ultimately, all four women said they were proud of how the show's evolved, and the bond they built.

"When I think about all the things that I've done and you guys have done, to be on the ground floor of something together and build something? That's a unique experience," said Vieira. "You know how people talk about family and it's sort of baloney? We really were a family. We had our dysfunction like every other family, but we had each other's backs."

The View airs weekdays (11 a.m. ET) on ABC.