Whoopi Goldberg Calls Out Oscars In Memoriam Snub of ‘Star Trek’ Buddy James Darren

Whoopi Goldberg was on hand for Monday’s (March 3) live episode of The View, despite appearing in Sunday’s Oscars telecast — in a late-night tribute to Quincy Jones, alongside The Color Purple costar Oprah Winfrey — and being one of the first people to arrive on the red carpet.

Goldberg admitted it was a major undertaking to make it back from the Los Angeles-based awards show in time for the talk show segment in New York, but she did so after making a promise to executive producer Brian Teta.

“I wasn’t expecting to see me either,” Goldberg joked in response to her cohosts expressing surprise over her attendance. “Most of me here is here, and I am a little bit out of it because we, literally, as soon as I got done, ran to the hotel, took the dress off, repacked it, put it in, and got away on the plane because I promised Brian I would be here.”

She went on to describe spending the evening with her daughter Alex Martin as her guest, recalling a time before when she joined her and Goldberg won Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Ghost.

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Goldberg also offered some words of conciliation to The View‘s current theme song creator Diane Warren, who did not win Best Original Song at the Oscars, saying, “I just want to send a little bit of love to our Diane Warren, who did not get her award last night, but Diane, we’re still behind you. Anything you write, we want to play.”

Then, after a very lively discussion of the “embarrassing” Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Winfrey and the other cohosts blasted Trump and Vance’s behavior and motives, she returned to the subject of the Oscars.

This time, she talked about the Academy Awards’ in memoriam segment and pointed out a few people who were missing. After paying tribute to New York Dolls frontman David Johansen and R&B singer Angie Stone, she said, “Some of the people who should have been included in the Oscars in memoriam last night: My dear, dear James Darren. I don’t know if you remember the show Gidget, but he was Moondoggie on Gidget. And for a lot of us, he was our very first kind of, ‘Oh, he’s cute. He’s cute.’ You know, he was wonderful.” Darren, like Goldberg, was an alum of the Star Trek TV universe, and the two memorably shared the stage during her first fan convention. Goldberg also namechecked Shannon Doherty and Michelle Trachtenberg as missing from the tribute and added, “Count your blessings; say a little prayer.”

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