Caroline Manzo: Barbara Walters ignored me, greeted a mistress on ‘The View’
Caroline Manzo felt slighted by Barbara Walters when she went on “The View” more than a decade ago.
The “Real Housewives of New Jersey” alum recalled: “Barbara Walters was there at the time, and she walks into the green room next door to mine to say hello to a guest and ‘Thank you for coming on the show,’ and I’m like, ‘Barbara’s coming in! Here comes Barbara!'”
However, “Barbara never showed,” Manzo told Page Six’s Evan Real and Danny Murphy during Thursday’s live taping of the “Virtual Reali-Tea” podcast at The Loft at City Winery in New York City.
The former reality star, 61, said she understood why Walters “couldn’t be bothered” to greet her and her co-stars backstage because of the “lowbrow” status of reality TV at the time.
But her perspective changed when she found out the other guest on that day’s show was a “woman that wrote a book on being a professional mistress.”
“You can’t be bothered, but look who you’re saying hello to, and you’re not coming to say hello to me next door? And I was offended by that,” Manzo continued.
Shortly afterward, Manzo joined the journalist and her co-hosts at the ABC talk show’s iconic table when she was interrogated about her son Chris Manzo’s idea of opening a strip club car wash.
“They say to me, ‘Well, your son wants to open a strip club car wash. What do you think of that?’ And I’m like, ‘What do I think of it? Show me an 18-year-old with an entrepreneurial mind like this. Show me an 18-year-old that’s brave enough to do what they want and has the courage enough to take a risk to do what he wants,'” the former “Housewife” recalled saying.
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Caroline added that to this day, she is still ready to “cut the ribbon if [Chris, now 34] ever opens a strip club car wash.”
“I kinda just looked at them like, ‘What are you trying to say? He could be playing video games, doing nothing all day long 24/7, but he’s thinking, he’s ambitious,” she said.
The host of the YouTube cooking show “Food, Love and Chaos” had at least one of the “View” women on her side, as she explained that Joy Behar gave her a nudge as if to say, “Good for you.”
Walters died at age 93 in December 2022.
Missed the live event? It’s not too late to stream the full show. New episodes of Page Six’s “Virtual Reali-Tea” podcast are released Thursdays.
