Stay With Me Here: Possible Drama at The View??

Say it with me now: (Alleged!) Drama! At! The! View!

“Sources” told The Daily Mail that the morale over at ABC’s The View was soaring earlier this week when the show’s primary adversaries, Joy Behar and Meghan McCain, were both out sick. The piece also takes pains to point out how much everyone, especially Goldberg, loved the makeshift lineup: Sunny Hostin, Tara Setmayer, and Ana Navarro. Interesting! I wonder who The Daily Mail’s sources might be…

Additionally, Goldberg’s role as the panel’s moderator is apparently taking a toll, with the actress and comedian apparently at wits’ end trying to keep Behar and McCain from slaughtering each other.

“Whoopi is at her breaking point with Meghan. She’s been trying to hang in there, especially keep the peace with Meghan and Joy, but we all know she’s about to break,” a source told The Daily Mail.

This same source also conveniently told the Mail that Meghan’s behind-the-scenes behavior is starting to match her on-screen persona (i.e. bad):

Beyond McCain’s on-air rants and spats with co-hosts, the source said she’s even more difficult behind the scenes.

The 34-year-old former Fox News commentator has reportedly developed a reputation for being nasty to certain producers, to the hair and makeup team and she regularly complains about the show’s executive producers to ABC bosses.

The source said: ‘Most of the producers and the award-winning glam team on our show have been here for years. I’m talking a decade-plus!

‘They have survived Rosie O’Donnell, Star Jones and even Barbara Walters. So for Meghan to be causing problems for them, it says a lot about her and really isn’t a reflection on them at all.’

Even if you’ve only paid a fraction of a moment’s attention to The View, then you know the show has always lived and died by this kind of gossipy backstage drama—there’s a whole damn book about it. What’s been harder to delineate is what any given View era’s breaking point ends up being (see: Rosie O’Donnell). Will Goldberg, Behar, or McCain quit in dramatic fashion? Quite possibly! For them, or any of the panelists really, it’s a constant internal negotiation between using the show’s huge, well-documented, and much ballyhooed platform to seriously raise your profile and get your message out and having to spend too many of your waking hours with people you consider to be the worst demons from hell.

Good luck to all.

Update, 3:40 p.m. ET: Breaking! As totally expected, McCain BLASTED any rumors of backstage brawling as “fake news,” the president’s favorite term.

But how do we KNOW McCain is being honest?

Checkmate.