Whoopi Goldberg Apologizes for Romani Slur on ‘The View’

Whoopi Goldberg Andy Kropa/Invision/AP/Shutterstock

Whoopi Goldberg is issuing an apology after she used an offensive term on The View.

“You know, when you’re a certain age, you use words that are from, you know, when you’re a kid or you remember saying,” the Sister Act star, 67, said in a video message shared via The View’s Twitter account on Wednesday, March 15. “And that’s what I did today, and I shouldn’t have.”

During Wednesday’s episode of the ABC talk show, Goldberg and her fellow cohosts — Sara Haines, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin and Alyssa Farah Griffin — discussed former President Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 general election. The Ghost actress quickly made an offhand quip that his supporters still “believe” they were deceived by the voting results. Goldberg used the word “gypped,” which is considered to be a racist and derogatory slur for individuals of Romani heritage.

Whoopi Goldberg on ‘The View.’ ABC/Lou Rocco

“I should have thought about it a little longer before I said it, but I didn’t,” Goldberg said in her apology. “And I should have said ‘cheated,’ [but] I used another word and I’m really, really sorry.”

The EGOT winner, who has cohosted The View since 2007, is no stranger to voicing controversial opinions at the roundtable. In January 2022, Goldberg made an off-color remark about the Holocaust.

“Let’s be truthful about it because [the] Holocaust isn’t about race. It’s not about race. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man,” she told her fellow panelists at the time during a conversation about banned books, including Art Spiegelman’s Maus about the genocide.

The Color Purple actress, who was given a two-week suspension from the broadcast, later apologized for her actions.

“It upset a lot of people, which was never ever, ever my intention. I thought it was a salient discussion because as a Black person, I think of race as being something that I can see. So I see you and know what race you are,” Goldberg said on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert amid the controversy. “I thought [the Holocaust] was more about man’s inhumanity to man. … People said, ‘No, no, we are a race.’ I felt differently. I respect everything everyone is saying to me.”

She continued at the time: “I don’t want to fake apologize. I am very upset that people misunderstood what I was saying. And because of it, they are saying I am antisemitic and denying the Holocaust and all these other things that would never occur to me to do.”

After her brief hiatus, Goldberg returned to The View on February 14, 2022, promising to continue having “tough conversations.”

“I gotta tell you, there’s something kind of marvelous about being on a show like this — because we are The View and this is what we do,” the New York native said during her return episode. “And sometimes we don’t do it as elegantly as we could. But it’s five minutes to get in important information about topics. And that’s what we try to do every day. … I’m telling you, people reached out from places that made me go, ‘Wait, wait, what? Really?’ And it was amazing. And I listened to everything everybody had to say. And I was very grateful.”