Twenty-five years ago, “The View” aired for the first time. The show is the brain child of Barbara Walters, and she was one of the ladies at the table when the show first started, but she wasn’t alone. The other original cohosts included Star Jones, Meredith Vieira and Joy Behar. Behar is the only original cohost who is still on the show.

Recently, the original cohosts got together for a reunion episode of “The View.” During this special show, the former cohosts chatted about their experience on the show including things that happened off screen.

One of the topics of conversation was about Jones’ weight loss. When she first started on the show, she was overweight, and she continued to gain weight. Vieira told Jones, “We were worried.”

But none of the cohosts confronted Jones about her weight. In retrospect, Jones wishes someone had. Behar explained, “I remember you said to me, ‘It would have been great if someone said, Star, you need to lose weight, you’re unhealthy,’ and I said, ‘Star, if I said that to you, you would have bit my head off’ and you said, ‘Yes, I would have!'”

Jones now realized that she was dangerously overweight. In 2020, on the “Tamron Hall” show, she admitted that at one point she was 307 pounds. She said, “I wasn’t fluffy, I wasn’t plus size, I wasn’t overweight — I was dying.”

In order to drop the weight, Jones had gastric bypass surgery, but she didn’t want to admit this on TV at the time. On “The View,” she told the audience she had “a medical intervention.” She also talked about diet and exercise.

The original cohosts weren’t comfortable lying for Jones on “The View.” Vieira explained that they felt “a little bit angry at the dialogue because we felt, ‘This isn’t honest.'”

Behar added, “She was in tremendous denial and we had to pretend it was something other than it was. We didn’t like that. We were told, ‘Well you have to be an actress,’ and it’s like, ‘We don’t get paid to be an actress.’ We were uncomfortable with that.”

Jones is proud of her weight loss. She said, “My greatest achievement is that I’m healthier now than I have been in my whole life.”

Behar complimented Jones for being able to talk about her weight struggle and weight loss openly and honestly. She explained, “I have to give her credit. Star never ever talked about her weight issue like that.”