Whoopi Goldberg Says She Dated a Man 40 Years Older Than Her During Age Gap Debate on ‘The View’

For Whoopi Goldberg, age is just a number! Things got rather interesting during an episode of The View on Thursday, March 7, when she admitted that one of her most recent relationships had a huge age gap.

The conversation arose as Whoopi, 68, and her colleagues chatted about the new film The Idea of You, starring Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine. Based on the 2017 novel, Anne, 41, portrays a 40-year-old single mother who falls for a 24-year-old boybander, played by Nicholas, 29. In the film, their characters have a 16-year age difference between them.

“It’s a movie. If you don’t want to see the movie, don’t see the movie,” Whoopi told critics of the age gap between the main characters.

She also shared some personal wisdom about facing age gaps in her past relationships.

“I’ve gone up and down. I go from here to here, because your age is not what’s going to get me into your arms. It’s not your age that I’m concerned about — unless you’re under 18, in which case I can’t,” the EGOT winner told her costars.

Joy Behar ended up chiming in to argue that a major age gap with a partner “could be problematic.” She went on to say that “60 and 80 starts to get a little hairy.”

After the comedian made the comment, Whoopi dropped a bombshell about her own love life.

“Actually, I’m just gonna say this to you. One of the last relationships I had, he was 40 years older than me,” the Sister Act actress confessed.

When Joy, 81, asked if that man was still alive, Whoopi, who has been married three times, confirmed that he was. This wasn’t the only time fans of the performer have heard about her love life in recent years. During an episode of the reality series Claim to Fame, Whoopi’s granddaughter Amara Skye dished on her grandmother’s dating history.

“She had a boyfriend that was, like, 90 years old, and she used to go hang out with him,” Amara, 34, said on the show. “Some old white man named John, and he was like a billionaire.”

She later expressed regrets about publicly revealing the private information.

“No one knew about that – I barely found out about that,” she reflected during an August 2022 interview with USA Today. “So I was just like, ‘Oh, man. I think I just put my grandma’s business out there, and I don’t really know if she’s going to be OK with this.’ But my grandma’s really, really cool and pretty open. So, I don’t think I did so bad.”