Stacking up real, TV ‘Daytime Divas’

Vanessa Williams knows a thing or two about daytime talk shows.

“I’ve been able to co-host a few times on different talk shows,” says the actress, who stars in VH1’s Daytime Divas (Monday,

10 ET/PT), a soapy parody of the genre. The basic analogy? Daytime Divas is to The View as Lifetime’s UnREAL is to ABC’s The Bachelor.

“I understand the game. I understand the show,” Williams says of Divas, adding, “But, obviously, the behind-the-scenes drama is nothing that I experienced.”

She received a call about the series last year from attorney and former View co-host Star Jones, author of Satan’s Sisters, the basis for Daytime Divas, who told her all the stories she wrote were true.

Williams plays presiding diva Maxine Robinson, a TV journalist who rules from the coveted “left chair” on The Lunch Hour. Sound familiar? (And no, Williams doesn’t know whether View creator Barbara Walters has seen it yet.)

She has no reservations about comparisons. “It’s another strong woman who’s in charge and there are high expectations. ... There’s an effort for perfection.”

Other characters, Williams says, are an “amalgamation of different hosts” from The View and newer rivals The Talk and The Real.

“We’ve got a comedian who has a standup career. We have an evangelical character who’s mar- ried to a race-car driver. We have a journalist who has been in the thick of war and considered a very credible war correspondent. We have the young character who was a child star in her own TV show who struggles with addiction and her own demons that Maxine is trying to mentor.” Here’s the rundown of the Day

time Divas and the real-life talk hosts who have something in common: