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Abby Huntsman joined “The View” in 2018, leaving two years later amidst reports of a toxic work environment on the show.
“I don’t talk much about that time, and I won’t, but the decision that I made was probably the best decision I could have made for my life, for my mental health, for my happiness, for my family,” Huntsman said an a candid interview with People.
As she admitted, she’s been enjoying the freedom of not starting each morning by “thinking about the next extreme comment I have to make about something.”
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Her decision to leave “The View” was not one that came easily, but it’s one she hasn’t regretted.
“I’ve been in the news industry for the last 10 years working at so many different places, but it was a decision that I felt in my gut, actually, for quite some time about making, much longer than people probably realize. And when I made the decision, I remember walking out those doors after they told me, ‘No one quits their dream job in television,’ and I said, ‘Well, this isn’t the dream job that I was hoping, in many ways, that it was,’” she said.
“When I walked out those doors for the first time, I could hear the birds chirping in the city, in Central Park, and I looked up in the sky and I thought, ‘This is the best thing I did for myself.’ Because I can see the world, I can hear the world, I’m more present,” she continued.
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“And I’ll be honest,” Huntsman added, “this last year has been a lot of healing and a lot of asking myself questions and thinking things back and wondering, ‘Did you make a mistake, did you handle this right or that right?’”
Huntsman’s next project is a podcast with her friend Lauren Leeds, which will likely launch in the fall .
According to Huntsman, the focus will be on “real life things, ups and downs and big chapters in life, losing someone you love, getting married, having kids, getting a divorce, becoming grandparents. Every time we’ve talked on the phone over the year — she’s in L.A., I’m in New York — we talked about the ups and downs of life. And she’s also in television, and we just say, ‘How fun it would be for us to get together and do it the way we want to, have the conversations that we want to have and really pull out the most interesting things from interesting people?’”
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Most important for her is that she’s now in control of her content.
“I didn’t want to be pulled on TV in a direction that wasn’t me, and so instead I just pulled myself from it on my own to say, ‘I don’t want this,’” she explained. “I’m really looking forward to having just an outlet that I can control.”
Looking back at “The View”, Huntsman stated, “I’ll have friends there for the rest of my life. I’ll have even some mentors there that I’ll keep for a long, long time. So I still feel so lucky to have had that opportunity.”
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