Live from New York, it’s… not Whoopi Goldberg.
During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter at Saturday Night Live‘s 50th Anniversary Special on Sunday night (Feb. 16), a member of the The View panel elaborated on why she has never taken on the role of hosting the NBC sketch comedy show, despite having been invited to do so.
She explained, “It required a week, it requires that you sit with people and write sketches and I didn’t have really the time and I didn’t want to do that. I’d been doing that for years, so I just wanted to work on my own.”
Goldberg recalled appearing on SNL once in 2013, telling THR, “Justin Bieber asked me to intro him. And that’s how I got here.”
Per The New York Post, Goldberg was serenaded by a then-18 year old Bieber on the show, who sang his hit “One Less Lonely Girl” to her.
However, according to Newsweek and The Daily Beast, Goldberg also made an appearance on the show in 1986.
Goldberg also shared her reasoning for never hosting SNL with Page Six, noting that she “didn’t want to.”
“Because you need to have a lot more going on when you come and do this than I was ready to deal with,” she revealed. “You have to work with lots of other people and I was ok in my life. But I introduced Justin Bieber, and that’s how I got here.”
Leslie Jones, one of the past SNL stars who has impersonated Goldberg on the show, took a seat at the Hot Topics Table on the Feb. 12 episode of The View, where Goldberg conceded that seeing her and fellow SNL star Kenan Thompson play her was “like looking at myself twice.”
Jones replied, “He loved it, he loved it! He actually loved playing you.”
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