Sara Haines came back to The View on Thursday and explained why she vanished from Wednesday’s broadcast: her father-in-law had died after a week in hospice. She said she learned the news right before the show and chose to sit out the live appearance.
That answer mattered because viewers had already been left guessing. Joy Behar had told the audience Haines was not sick, and Alyssa Farrah Griffin joked that the explanation made the absence sound scandalous. Haines said she wanted to clear up the rumors before they grew any more.
Haines said the loss hit Max Shifrin hardest. Her husband had been away, had not seen the children, Alec, Sandra and Caleb, and had only just come home when the family was dealing with the death. She said the man who died was the most important person in Shifrin’s life and that she first learned about him on their first date, when he was described as Shifrin’s North Star.
The moment also drew a larger circle around the personal lives attached to The View. Haines, who left the show in 2018 and came back two years later, has become one of its regular voices after a run that also included Good Morning America. The panel was already in motion on Wednesday when Whoopi Goldberg said she would be away for two weeks to film Women Like Us, a movie she said was produced by Barack Obama and Michelle Obama.
Haines said the family was now trying to absorb what happened and keep moving through it. She put it plainly: the news let a burden fall away, but the chapter they are in is still brutal. For viewers, the answer to her absence is now clear. For Haines and Shifrin, the hard part is only beginning.
