Raven-Symoné says that The View catfished her

Raven-Symoné is clearly relieved to have The View in her rearview. In a new video interview for them, the actor reflects on her long career, including her brief stint on the venerated talk show. Though she counts it as a valuable learning experience, it’s not one that she’d ever care to repeat.

“Whoopi Goldberg is one of the most amazing people that I’ve ever met in my life,” says Raven-Symoné. “She’s the reason I did it. Would I do it again? No. No, I wouldn’t do that again. Did I learn massive lessons that it is a skill to be on live television and voice your opinions? Yes. I apologized multiple times for the things that came out of my mouth, and I still am learning from them, but I did grow up.”

Part of her issue with the program was that she felt lied to about her role: “First of all, they told me this wasn’t going to be politically oriented when they revamped it. So catfished for one,” she reveals. “Two, me coming out wasn’t a part of that,” she adds, referencing how she had revealed her sexual orientation on Twitter prior to joining The View.

Raven-Symoné certainly found herself in a few political quagmires during her time on the program, but it was also a vulnerable period for her in the wake of that coming out. She suppressed her identity on The View with “the mask of like, ‘I didn’t say anything that I said. I’m back to the person that you knew from before. Nobody knows what’s going on with me!’ Like, living in my own secret bubble but knowing that other people know,” she shares with a noise of discomfort.

“Like I said, when I started that show, I pretended like I didn’t even say anything. Like it wasn’t a part of my identity,” Raven-Symoné goes on to say. “I went right back to that other person. I’m used to hiding. I’m used to hiding myself. So it was easy to hide in plain view.”

“One of the reasons I really wanted to do [The View] was because I felt a lot of people in my position, ‘growing up’ in front of the world, normally people take routes of oversexualization, and look how big my boobies are,” the former child star explains. “But, it’s just overtly that way, and I wanted to show my adultness through my brain, which… nah, I’m good, I’m good, I’m good, I want to be a kid again! I enjoyed it though.”