Jenny McCarthy: I Wasn’t Fired From ‘The View’ – It Was ‘Mutual’

Jenny McCarthy says she was not fired from “The View.”

“When I originally came on, I was elated. It was Barbara Walters’ last year, I was her last hire. I studied with her and watched her every move and I was brought on to change the views perspective and make it lighter and more pop culture fun,” Jenny told Access Hollywood in a new interview. “It was very polarizing, the audience thought, and very political. And it kind of drove people away.”

With “The View’s” ratings down, Jenny said the show is returning to a more conflict-based format, bringing on strong personalities like Rosie O’Donnell.

“Midway through the season they realized they needed to replace Barbara. Those are big shoes to fill. In order to fill those kind of shoes you need to bring a heavy lifter in,” she explained. “The idea was talked about around that time that Rosie might be coming back. And it’s just obvious after being a part of the table they want more conflict and debate.

“You can’t really have five democrats sitting around a table,” she continued. “It was mutual. I can’t be a part of this and they agreed. They want a right wing tough badass in there.”

But for now, Jenny is remaining on the view until the new season starts in September.

“It’s not weird because it wasn’t, ‘You’re fired, get out,’ it was very peaceful – there was no reason for either of our sides to end abruptly,” she said. “It was wonderful kind of, for me, I look at it like a college course I took with Barbara Walters.”

And Jenny has already found a new medium – bringing her humor to Sirius/XM radio with a new weekly live show, “Dirty, Sexy, Funny with Jenny McCarthy” airing Wednesday nights. (It premieres on July 16.)

“It’s 100 percent myself and without interruption, and the idea of having the microphone and being able to say whatever – I want that kind of freedom,” she said. “The only analogy I can give is me going to Catholic school all my life and then when I went to college. That [kind of] freedom. I went nuts!”

— Erin O’Sullivan