The women of “The View” condemned critics of the Olympics’ drag rendition of “The Last Supper” after former co-host Candace Cameron Bure expressed her disdain for the production.
“It’s like, come on y’all – it’s the Olympics! Stop! They’re not trying to do anything except talk about the history. They’re showing you the history,” Whoopi Goldberg began on Monday’s episode of the ABC talk show while discussing the backlash over the performance.
Goldberg, 68, then encouraged those who were “not happy” with the show to watch something else, rather than spending “20 hours to write an email.”
Whoopi Goldberg, Sara Haines, Ana Navarro and Alyssa Farah Griffin talking on Monday’s episode of “The View.”
The “Sister Act” star started the conversation on Monday’s episode of the ABC talk show.
“Just turn the TV off! Watch something else! Put the newspaper down, don’t look at the pictures, these are choices. These are our choices. You have the ability. Forget what Instagram is telling you. If you don’t like it, go to something else! You don’t have to stay! You have it in your power to make the change,” she continued.
Sara Haines agreed with the “Sister Act” actress, pointing out that the artistic director Thomas Jolly released a statement that it was “never an intention to show disrespect towards any religious group or belief.”
“I get so frustrated with religion. Don’t go by the literal letter of the bible, go by the example of the word – which is live with the grace, live with the forgiveness,” Haines, 46, argued.
The Olympics’ opening ceremony included a drag performance on Friday.
Several people dressed in drag for the controversial performance in Paris on Friday.
Haines admitted that she is “so tired of being beaten over the head with religious messages when someone walks along their life not living like Jesus at all.”
Ana Navarro chimed in to remind viewers that the Parisian opening ceremony ran for nearly four hours, and the controversial drag show moment “was a very small part of it.”
“It’s what’s consumed so much of America, I guess, and I would say, it happens every four years. There are young people who train their entire lives, to be there to represent our countries. Can we please give them the focus?” Navarro, 52, wondered.
The women discussed the topic after their former “View” co-host Cameron Bure – who previously worked with Goldberg and Haines – made headlines for slamming the drag moment as “disgusting” that “completely blasphemed and mock[ed] the Christian faith.”
“It made me so sad, and someone said, ‘You shouldn’t be sad. You should be mad about it.’ I’m like, ‘Trust me, it makes me mad, but I’m more sad because I’m sad for souls,’” she said in part of an Instagram Story on Saturday.
The “Full House” star, 48, believed – along with other people – that the scene was a recreation of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous “The Last Supper” painting. However, the art director has since denied that interpretation and said he based it off a 17th-century Dutch painting of the Greek Olympian gods.
“There is Dionysus who arrives on this table. He is there because he is the God of celebration in Greek mythology. The idea was to have a pagan celebration connected to the gods of Olympus. You will never find in me a desire to mock and denigrate anyone,” Jolly told local French news outlet BFM-TV Sunday.
Cameron Bure later addressed those who “tried to correct” her on the inspiration behind the moment but argued that she still does “not see how that relates to unifying the world through competitive sports and acceptable for children to watch.”
“In any case, I’m not buying it,” she concluded.
Kansas City Chiefs tight end Harrison Butker – who previously faced backlash for sexist and anti-LGBTQ comments in May – agreed with Cameron Bure and called it “crazy.”