Sunny Hostin, Gypsy Rose Blanchard Jed Cullen/Dave Benett/Getty Images; JC Olivera/WireImage
Gypsy Rose Blanchard has won over legions of fans and well-wishers since her release from prison, but The View’s Sunny Hostin is not one of them.
During the Friday, May 3 “Hot Topics” segment on the daytime talk show, the panel discussed Blanchard’s relationship with her boyfriend, Ken Urker, Blanchard’s ex-fiancé with whom she recently started dating again.
“I just don’t understand prison love,” Hostin, 55, said. “I don’t understand it. I have successful, beautiful girlfriends that can’t get a date.”
Blanchard and Urker originally got in touch during a prison pen pal program while Blanchard was serving time for the second-degree murder of her mother, Claudine “Dee Dee” Blanchard. The pair got engaged in 2018, but broke things off the following year.
Blanchard went on to marry Ryan Scott Anderson in 2022 while she was still incarcerated. She filed for divorce from Anderson on April 8, less than four months after her release from prison.
Gypsy Rose Blanchard and Ken Urker MEGA
“She killed her mom,” Hostin said of Blanchard. “I don’t know how you then start writing letters to her and then sleep next to her as the husband without one eye open. She killed a loved one. I just don’t understand the whole fascination.”
While Blanchard did serve eight years for the 2015 murder of her mother, she wasn’t responsible for the actual physical act of murder. Blanchard convinced then-boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn to stab her mother to death after years of physical and emotional abuse.
In November 2018, Godejohn, now 34, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
While The View cohost Alyssa Farah Griffin argued Blanchard needs “to have more time” before she commits to Urker again, she said Blanchard is having “to adjust to being in the real world.”
Farah Griffin, 34, said Blanchard’s journey might be messy, but “she’s coming into her own and deciding how she wants to be in this world.”
Since The View premiered in August 1997, more than 20 women have had permanent roles as cohosts on the ABC morning talk show. The series, which was created by Barbara Walters, features a multi-generational panel that conducts interviews and discusses the news of the day, ranging from politics to entertainment. The original lineup was comprised […]
Cohost Sara Haines agreed, pointing to the 2017 documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest, which told Blanchard’s story.
“My heart breaks for her,” Haines, 46, said. “If you watched the documentary, the severe abuse from her infanthood to [today], the trauma she will carry every single day of her life, I think she’s going to make decisions good and bad and otherwise. I give her so many passes.”
Hostin wasn’t having any of it, responding bluntly, “She killed her mom.”
When Farah Griffin attempted telling Hostin she “did the time” and paid her dues in prison, Hostin planted a defiant flag.
“Murder is wrong,” Hostin said. “Murder is bad.”