Oprah’s string of sit-downs with celebrities trying to shove projects and/or agendas down our throats under the guise of “I’m just being honest” confessionals continued yesterday with an appearance by Barbara Walters. The veteran journalist/co-host wrangler took a seat on the Queen of Daytime’s couch (renowned for its magical powers of damage control and still imprinted with Tom Cruise’s butt groove), to flog her new autobiography, Audition. But while O fixated on Babwa Wawa’s admission of an affair with a black senator (yawn!), Walters’ most riveting revelations involved her former View co-hosts.

The woman who’s forged a career out of making celebrities cry shed a few tears of her own when discussing her adulterous past and stuttering sister, but she put down the hankie and pulled out the claws to reminiscence about Star Jones. Calling the lawyer/former View co-host “clinically obese,” Walters admitted that everyone on the talk show covered up the real reason behind Jones’ dramatic weight loss. 

“She could barely walk onto the set. You could hear her breathing. And she decided to have a gastric bypass operation, which she did,” Walters dished. “But then she decided not to tell anybody...and we had to then lie on the set everyday because she said it was portion control and pilates."

Walters also had harsh words for former co-host Rosie O’Donnell, who she claimed wanted Walters to be her surrogate mother.

“She had a lot of anger and rage and hurt,” remembered Walters. “Her mother died when she was barely 11. And I don't think Rosie ever got over it. And in a lot of ways she began to think of me as her mother. That was both good and bad, because if I didn't do what she hoped I would do in certain cases, then she felt I had abandoned her.”

Surprisingly, the usually volatile O’Donnell didn’t seem to mind Walters’ revelations, writing on her official site’s Q&A page “i know barbara walters / i love barbara walters / all her feelings r ok with me.”

That understanding response wasn’t shared by Jones, who unloaded her vitriol towards her former employer as if it were an awkwardly heterosexual husband. 

“It is a sad day when an icon like Barbara Walters, in the sunset of her life, is reduced to publicly branding herself as an adulterer, humiliating an innocent family with accounts of her illicit affair and speaking negatively against me all for the sake of selling a book," Jones said in a statement to Us Weekly. "It speaks to her true character.”

So, we’re guessing there’s no hope for a warm and fuzzy reunion show in the near future?

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