Whoopi Goldberg and Sunny Hostin have joined Oprah Winfrey in speaking out about using weight loss medications, with Goldberg saying she made the decision after hitting almost 300 pounds during the filming of the 2022 film Till.
“I weighed almost 300 pounds when I was made Till,” Goldberg said during the Hot Topics segment of today’s The View on ABC.
See video below.
Goldberg had suffered severe back pain in 2021 and was treated with steroids as part of her recovery, leading to weight gain. Goldberg starred in the 2022 film Till, about the murder of Emmett Till.
“I had taken all those steroids and was on all this stuff,” she said today, “and one of the things that helps me drop the weight is Mounjaro.” (Mounjaro is a prescription weight loss medication similar to Ozempic.)
Goldberg later said she hadn’t previously noticed her weight gain. “I just always felt like me, and then I saw me and I was like, Oh, that’s a lot of me.”
Hostin then said that she herself had dropped 40 pounds after being prescribed Mounjaro.
“During Covid I gained 40 pounds,” the co-host said. “All I did was eat. I love to cook and I found out I love to eat. And I was horrified by the fact that I would have to come out on air. So I took Mounjaro.”
Hostin said the public reaction to her weight loss was surprisingly unpleasant. “I got all these nasty emails saying you’re too skinny and why did you do this and you’re taking the drug away from diabetics. So there is shame when you’ve gained weight and I had never experienced that kind of shame before. And what I loved about what she [Oprah] said is obesity is a disease…”
At that point, co-host Joy Behar interjected, “Wait a minute. How is it a disease when you were just eating everything?”
Hostin explained, “I didn’t have the disease, I wasn’t clinically obese.”
“I was,” Goldberg said.
The discussion was a response to Winfrey’s An Oprah Special: Shame, Blame and the Weight Loss Revolution, which debuted on ABC March 18 and the following day on Hulu.
In February, Winfrey announced she was leaving the WeightWatchers board of directors after a 9-year run and donating her stock in the company in order to avoid any potential conflict of interest over her use of weight-loss medications.