Whoopi Goldberg will not be appearing on The View in the upcoming weeks after making controversial remarks about the Holocaust.
In a statement obtained by E! News on Feb. 1, ABC president Kim Godwin said she is suspending Goldberg for two weeks, effective immediately, due to “her wrong and hurtful comments.”
Godwin continued, “While Whoopi has apologized, I’ve asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments. The entire ABC News organization stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends, family and communities.”
A source tells E! News what Goldberg’s suspension “is a surprise to most of the staff.”
“There are a lot of text messages being sent around right now. Tomorrow will be interesting,” the insider noted. “Discussions have already begun about how this will be addressed on the show tomorrow.”
News of the suspension comes just a day after Goldberg said that the Holocaust was “not about race” during a discussion about a Tennessee school board’s recent decision to remove Maus, a graphic novel about the atrocity, from an eighth-grade language arts curriculum. At the time, the 66-year-old actress claimed that the Holocaust was “about man’s inhumanity to man.”