UPDATED with video: CBS‘ The Talk creator/EP Sara Gilbert announced at the top of Tuesday’s broadcast that she is leaving the daily show at the end of the season.
“This is something I have been struggling with for a while, and going back and forth, but I’ve decided it’s time for me to leave the show,” Gilbert began.
News comes little more than two weeks after ABC announced it has ordered a second season of Roseanne spinoff The Conners, after series’ producer Werner Entertainment secured new deals with the core cast of Roseanne veterans, including Gilbert. ABC did not reveal number of episodes ordered, but it’s expected to be 13-episode-ish.
“I obviously love it here, and this was extremely difficult,” Gilbert continued emotionally on Tuesday’s The Talk.
“Last season I did The Conners and, as you know, also producing… and I loved it and felt totally empowered. But my life was slightly out of balance, and I was not spending as much time with my three kids as I would like.”
As she develops more programs to produce and opportunities to act, she said, she realized she could not “do it all” and decided to give up this gig on the CBS daytime talker that’s now nine years old.
Her fellow panelists reacted emotionally, none more so than Sharon Osbourne, which you can watch below.
It’s The Talk’s second major recent panel change.
In January, CBS made it official that Carrie Ann Inaba was replacing Julie Chen, wife of ousted CBS CEO Les Moonves’ on the daily talk show, Inaba joined Gilbert, Eve, Sharon Osbourne and Sheryl Underwood. Throughout the past two seasons, Inaba had appeared as a recurring guest co-host.
Inaba, maybe best known serving as a judge on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars for all 27 seasons, had been Chen’s choice to replace her on the CBS talker, as she made very clear in her taped video announcing her exit, which the show aired in early September to no one’s surprise, shortly after her husband got expelled from CBS Corp.
After paying tribute to each of her on-air colleagues, Chen told that day’s guest host Inaba “In my opinion you look awfully good sitting there, my Asian sister. I’m just saying!”
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