Nearly two decades into her run behind the moderator’s desk at “The View,” Whoopi Goldberg has boiled her reason for staying down to three words.

Goldberg, 70, told W Magazine in an interview published Oct. 27, 2026, that after almost 20 years on the ABC daytime show she keeps the seat for “a good check.”

Carolyn Twersky Winkler wrote the piece, which appears in the magazine’s print edition, with photographs by Felipe Cordeiro. Goldberg wore her own clothes and accessories for the shoot.

Twersky Winkler pressed her on whether the check was genuinely all of it. “That’s really what it is. I’m well-paid, and I do a good job. I earn my dough, and sometimes people like it, sometimes they don’t,” Goldberg said.

“No one is going to pay me guy money to be in a movie,” she said. “I get what I can, have as good a time as I can, and I don’t really worry about it too much.”

She Told Keke Palmer First

Goldberg offered an earlier version of the same remark in August on the podcast “Baby, This Is Keke Palmer.” Host Keke Palmer asked her favorite part of the job. “The check. I love the check,” Goldberg replied.

Palmer said she could only imagine the figure. Goldberg told her she couldn’t — the number would stun her — and clarified that “The View” is not the best-paying job she has ever had.

Goldberg pointed to the family and the photos around her house each morning, and said it is good to have a job.

Grocers’ Letter Over the “Pigs” Remark

Goldberg blamed rising supermarket prices on the people who own the stores during the Nov. 7, 2024 broadcast, calling them “pigs.”

The National Grocers Association, which represents more than 21,000 stores, objected in a letter to Brian Teta, executive producer of “The View.” The letter said its members operate on margins of 1 percent to 2 percent and that such claims put retail workers at risk.

Goldberg told the studio audience five days later, on the Nov. 12, 2024 episode, that she understood the squeeze and works for a living too. She would not be sitting there if she had all the money in the world, she said.

Twersky Winkler asked whether weighing in on politics ever scares her. Goldberg answered flatly: no.

She gave the credit for that to Barbara Walters, the creator of “The View,” who recruited her to speak her mind. Goldberg still treats that offer as an obligation. Walters died in December 2022 at 93.

The Chair Rosie O’Donnell Left

Goldberg took over the moderator’s chair in September 2007, at the start of Season 11, filling the seat Rosie O’Donnell had vacated. Season 30 launched in September, her 20th. No host has lasted longer without a break, though Joy Behar, who joined the show’s first season in 1997 and briefly stepped away, has more total time at the table.

Behar, Sunny Hostin, Ana Navarro, Sara Haines and Alyssa Farah Griffin are her current tablemates. The panel devotes part of each “Hot Topics” segment to President Donald Trump, and Goldberg ranks among his sharpest critics there, even though she has sworn off saying his name on air.

Goldberg said in September that she has considered walking away many times and that her own longevity surprises her. Her advice to viewers furious with her is to skip the episode. She was suspended for two weeks in 2022 over remarks about the Holocaust, which she later apologized for and clarified.

Deloris Returns Without Maggie Smith

“Sister Act 3” is officially underway, with Goldberg returning to Deloris, the nightclub singer who hides from the Mob in a convent. She wanted to make it while her co-star Maggie Smith was alive but could not get it done in time, she said.

Goldberg is an EGOT winner, the first Black person to collect an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. Her one-woman Broadway show “Whoopi Goldberg” opened in 1984, and the HBO recording aired in 1985 and won her the Grammy. The 2026 revival “The Whoopi Monologues” starred several actors, including Kerry Washington and Kara Young.

She voiced Cupcake this year, an old, filthy, bald cat with a dirty mouth, on the animated series “Kevin.” In September she stepped away from “The View” for parts of two weeks to film Netflix’s “Women Like Us” with Jenifer Lewis, Vanessa Williams and Vivica A. Fox.

O’Donnell has said she plans to return for Season 30, though the show’s executive producer has played down those claims. The show airs weekdays at 11 a.m. ET on ABC.

Asked what she wants to be remembered for, Goldberg said: “Just for being a decent person who maybe made mistakes but didn’t run from anything.”