Joy Behar says Whoopi Goldberg will be absent from The View for ‘a while’

Joy Behar says Whoopi Goldberg will be absent from The View for “a while” as she’s filming Prime Video’s upcoming series adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys.

On Monday’s (11 April) episode of the daytime talk show, Behar said: “If you’re wondering where Whoopi is, the girl’s got a movie she’s making and she will be back when she finishes whatever she’s doing.”

“So she’s gone for a while,” she added.

According to Variety, Anansi Boys is being filmed in Scotland.

In the six-episode show, Goldberg is set to play the role of Bird Woman, who is the God of Birds and a key antagonist in the series.

The Sister Act star has been cast alongside Malachi Kirby, Delroy Lindo, Amarah-Jae St Aubyn, Grace Saif, Fiona Shaw, and L Scott Caldwell, among others.

The series is adapted from a 2005 fantasy novel of the same name which follows the story of Charles Nancy (Kirby) – the son of late Mr Nancy (Lindo) – who, his son learns, is actually the African trickster god Anansi. He also learns that his father had another son (also played by Kirby), one who inherited all his god-like powers.

Goldberg told Variety that she’s been “a fan of this book for a very long time”.

“When Neil Gaiman told me it was being brought to the screen, I did everything I could to be part of it to help make people aware of Anansi and all his magic,” she said.

Gaiman added: “When I first conceived Anansi Boys, decades ago, I imagined Whoopi Goldberg as Bird Woman.”

“I wasn’t able to meet her until 2018, when she interviewed me with some of the Good Omens team at New York Comic Con,” he said. “At which point she mentioned that she had just finished listening to Sir Lenny Henry’s reading of Anansi Boys, and that it was one of her favourite books. Sometimes things feel planned and inevitable, and we are incredibly lucky. She’s going to be scary.”