Divorce tends to be seen as a sad or difficult situation, but not for Whoopi Goldberg, who has been married three times. The Sister Act star, 67, tied the knot with Alvin Martin in 1973, but they split six years later, and she went on to marry cinematographer David Claessen in 1986 before they divorced in 1988. Her third husband was Lyle Trachtenberg, to whom she was married for just one year in 1994.
Whoopi surprised The View fans when she admitted that she was "dancing and prancing" when it came to the end of her marriages, stating: "I was never meant to be married."
Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin were discussing their "wrenching" emotions surrounding divorce. Whoopi clearly could not relate, as she interjected: "I was dancing and prancing around, I was so glad to get out of there! Every time. Because I always thought, 'You didn't want to do this from the giddyap! You knew you didn't want to do it and you did it anyway so shut up and move on!"
When Joy asked why she chose to get married in the first place, Whoopi explained that she was trying to conform to societal expectations. "I thought I could make a round hole go into a square peg. I thought that that was what was for me.
"I was never meant to be married. And I know that and I knew that then and I kept trying to do what everybody would say I was supposed to do and then it was like, you know what, 'This is getting expensive and boring.'"
This isn't the first time that Whoopi has been vocal about her thoughts on marriage. "I’m much happier on my own. I can spend as much time with somebody as I want to spend, but I’m not looking to be with somebody forever or live with someone," she told The New York Times magazine in 2016. "I don’t want somebody in my house."
She reiterated her views three years later, telling the publication: "Look, people expect you to have a boyfriend. They expect you to get married.
"So I kept trying to do that, but I didn't want to share information with somebody else. I didn't want anybody asking me why I was doing what I was doing, or to have to make the other person feel better. But if you're in a relationship, you have to do those things, and it took me a while to figure out that I didn't want to."
When she's not on The View, Whoopi spends time at her $2.8 million mansion in New Jersey. According to Architectural Digest, the TV star first moved to her Colonial-style home in the gated community of Llewellyn Park in 2009. It features eight bedrooms and seven bathrooms, and it is decorated with "eclectic" artwork.