Welch comparison draws jeers
“The View” audience made one thing clear this week: Kim Kardashian is no Raquel Welch.
During Thursday’s episode of the ABC show,
Whoopi Goldberg opened a segment by honoring Welch, who died the day before at 82 after a brief illness.
“We were so heartbroken to hear about the passing of one of the world’s most enduring sex symbols, the fabulous Raquel Welch,” Goldberg said as photos of the actor flashed on a screen, including a shot from the 1966 film, “One Million Years B.C.” where she poses in her iconic fur bikini.
“You know, they don’t make any sex symbols like that,” co-host Joy Behar chimed in.
“I don’t know any present,” she said as co-host
Sunny Hostin interjected.
“Well, Kim Kardashian is kind of a sex symbol.”
The crowd and other panelists immediately erupted into boos, jeers and yelling “No.”
“Kardashian? No, no,” Behar said amid the litany of boos.
Hostin acted surprised at the reaction, clutching her pearls with her jaw dropped toward the audience uproar.
Goldberg stammered, “That’s not even ... You can’t even put them in the same ... I’m not even ... Look, I’m moving on.”
Welch was well aware of her status as a sex symbol and cinematic eye candy earlier in her career.
Some of the roles she was cast in were “so painfully uncomfortable and in a way kind of humiliating,” Welch told the L.A. Times in 2010.
Yet she also used her status to move her career forward and further her ambitions to be taken seriously as an actor, landing parts in award-winning movies and comedic and dramatic roles.
“Being a sex symbol was a tremendous responsibility and a constant battle,” she told the L.A. Times in 1986. “It used to bother me at first, but I now know you can have that and be respected as well. You can have both.”
Welch, born Jo Raquel Tejada, and her contributions remained on the mind of “The View” cohost Ana Navarro, who dropped some knowledge on the audience before quickly moving on to the next segment.
“I was really frustrated yesterday in every mention that I saw in the news about Raquel Welch, nobody mentioned that she was Latino,” she said to cheers from the audience. “She was a Latino trailblazing actress from Bolivia — her dad was Bolivian.”