It’s hard to imagine “The View” without Joy Behar. The show’s Emmy-award-winning co-host known for putting the “hot” in “hot topics,” Behar has been a fixture at the popular ABC-TV daytime talk show for 28 years — “minus the two years they canned me,” she adds with a wry smile. She knows she ruffles feathers.
“‘The View’ gives me an income, but I get a lot of people who are angry with me for the position I take,” said Behar. That doesn’t stop her from expressing her opinions.
Now the longstanding television star, comedian, book author, and actress is taking her creative talents to the stage, starring in a new off-Broadway production of comedic and moving monologues about divorce she’s written titled “My First Ex-Husband” at the MMAC Theater from January 29 to February 23. It’s not her first foray as a playwright, but it is her first big theatrical production (eight shows a week) in a New York theater.
Behar will be joined by cast members Susie Essman (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”), Tovah Feldshuh (“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”), and Adrienne C. Moore (“Orange Is the New Black”). The open-ended run will feature a rotating cast of four actresses every four weeks, with Susan Lucci, Judy Gold, Cathy Moriarty, Tonya Pinkins (February 26 to March 23), and Veanne Cox, Gina Gershon, Jackie Hoffman, Andrea Navedo (March 26 to April 20).
Behar says she was “always curious” about divorce, having gone through her own in 1982 when her first marriage ended after 16 years. She began recording divorce stories in 2012 after convincing a close friend to allow her to interview her to “see if we can get to the bottom of what it was” that caused the breakup. Behar found the interview so compelling that she decided to interview another woman, and then another, until she had hours and hours of stories.
“I would then take the meat and make it into a monologue — add, subtract, make it funnier here and there, ’cause you know, people want to laugh, but keep the essential truth of the story. And that’s what I’ve done.”
Last winter, at the Southampton Inn, Behar tried out some of the divorce monologues in front of a live audience at two sold-out Salon nights, enlisting actors Mercedes Ruehl and Tovah Feldshuh. The reaction was encouraging. Behar brought in Tony Award-winning producer Rose Caiola and veteran talent manager and producer Cyrena Esposito, who, along with Tracy Mitchell, co-produced two sold-out benefit performances at Bay Street Theater last summer with Randall Myler directing.
“We were proud to help develop this engaging, provocative, and hilarious work at Bay Street, in two separate nights with several months in between so that Joy could work on rewrites,” said Mitchell, Executive Director at Bay Street Theater. “We’re excited for it to continue.”
We caught up with Joy Behar at her home in Sag Harbor, a week before her off-Broadway opening night preview, to talk about “My First Ex-Husband.”
The topic of divorce — why is that such a hot-button issue for people?
Well, because there’s drama. I think that’s one of the main reasons which lends itself to plays and movies and musicals.
Also, people are nosy, as am I. That’s what really prompted this whole thing. I’d drive by apartments on the Upper East Side sometimes when I was living in Queens, and I’d be able to look into those New York City apartments on Sutton Place, and I could see in their houses, and first I thought, “I want to live there.” Number two, I thought, “I wonder what’s going on in there.”
And that’s what this is about. It’s like looking into somebody’s apartment or house surreptitiously.
Was it painful for women who shared their stories? Was it cathartic?
No, it was not painful in the least, they couldn’t wait to tell me these stories [laughs]. It was very easy… sometimes they don’t want to talk about it, but it’s very rare.
And the stories are anonymous?
Everyone is anonymous. The dates, the names, the places, everything has been changed, so there’s no clue.
Did you write about your own divorce?
You know, I started writing my own and talking about my own, and it wasn’t that interesting [laughs]. I feel like people have better stories than I do.
Did you already figure out why you were divorced?
One of the reasons was we were completely unsuited. And even now, my ex lives at Exit 60 [off the LIE], and I live in Manhattan. We were geographically unsuited. He was raised on a beach, and I was raised in a tenement. Geographically, we were never going to get it together.
But you ended up in the Hamptons…
This is not the same thing as being trapped at Exit 60!
But the beach, the beach —
But I don’t go to the beach [laughs]. He was raised on the beach. Not on the exact beach, or he’d be full of sand… so that was one problem. And we were very young. We were like two unformed pieces of protoplasm, in a way.
Like a science experiment gone awry —
That’s right, exactly. We didn’t know who we were, much less whom the other person was. It was nobody’s fault, really.
You’ve been writing plays now for how long?
A long time. I started them at your house.
I know, those crazy Salons.
It’s funny, you know my Uncle Joe and my Aunt Rose were very funny. They didn’t know it. He used to say, “I got cancer.” And we’d say, “No, you don’t have it,” but for some reason, he was paranoid about having cancer. And because he didn’t have cancer, it was funny. I thought to myself, I’m going to write a scene [about them] and do it at one of Angela’s parties/salons just to see. What you provided was a completely safe environment where you could try anything, and you still do. You can try anything, and no one is judging. And I gave the scene to two people who are now deceased, Taffy and Vinny, and Vinny turned out to be a hilarious actor… the way he’d do the scene, “Ah… the cannoli.”
This run is exciting — it must feel like a dream come true…
I’m excited because it’s a real production. The closest I came to this was in November 2023 when we did [her comedic play] “Bonkers in the Boroughs” for the New York Comedy Fest.
There are fits and starts. Nothing goes smoothly, you have to keep trying, and you have to rewrite and bring it to different people to see what they like. I particularly like playwriting because it’s so collaborative. I’m an only child. It’s not that easy for me [laughs].
I have a wonderful producer, Rose Caiola. She and Cyrena Esposito, they’re like the Italian mob with tits [laughs]. The three of us are having so much fun with this.
What do you think people walk away with after seeing these monologues —
They’re very relatable. Even if you never got a divorce, you still have problems with in-laws, let’s say, or sex, or kids, or money — everybody has problems. Marriage is a work in process all the time, you know, and people have trouble with it.
And your husband, Steve Janowitz, never feels threatened by any of this?
He likes it. In fact, he even helps me. Like if I need a line, he’s very funny, so if I say I need a line here, he gives it to me. I will take any help I can get [laughs].
How do you know when something feels right? What’s the arc?
There’s a certain truth to it, I think. And when you tell the truth, even in standup, it’s funny in itself, and then you can embellish it. But I think that each one of these stories rings true.
Do you think women still hold on to that fantasy of “my prince will come” and want that big “over the top” wedding?
I think when you asked me before what’s my story, I should remember this: when I got married, I wanted a big wedding. And I wanted a musical comedy [we laugh].
When I grew up, I was like Shirley Temple in the middle of a big Italian family: “Sing another one, tell another joke, dance!” They all came to the wedding, and I felt obligated to put on a performance — and that’s what I did. And that performance basically annihilated the whole idea of being married in the sense of marriage. It was all about me doing the Missoula. I did a dance, and I remember leading a Missoula and talking to everyone. I forgot he was there. I was the star of my musical comedy that day.
See, what I’m telling you now is the truth of myself. I’m turning myself in here. What I’m telling you is that I was an idiot and that I was a self-absorbed people pleaser, and that’s why… I started out wrong. Right there. And that’s why all the stories work.
Do you feel it’s a relief for people to talk about divorce?
I think so. I think there’s a major relief when they vent. Nobody is asking because it’s too rude to ask.
But that doesn’t stop you.
That doesn’t stop me [we laugh]. I mean, it’s rude. I’m nosy, but I’m very inquisitive — that’s why I’m a good interviewer, as are you right now; you are interested in talking to the person, and when you’re interested in talking to people, they’re happy to tell you stuff. Because nobody ever asks them.
Angela LaGreca is a four-time Emmy award-winning producer, writer, and comedian. She can be reached at angelatvmedia@gmail.com.