Whoopi Goldberg’s mom was hospitalized for two years during the “View” co-host’s childhood — and lost memories after undergoing electroshock therapy.
Emma Harris didn’t tell Goldberg that she forgot who her children were at the time, waiting 40 years to share the “secret” with her daughter.
“She said, ‘I didn’t know who you were when I got out of the hospital,’” Goldberg, 68, writes in her forthcoming memoir, “Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother and Me,” per an excerpt obtained by People Thursday.
At the time, the EGOT winner replied, “I’m sorry, what? I’m sorry, what?”
Harris then explained, “Yeah, I had no idea who you were. I just knew I never wanted to go back to that hospital. So I had to do everything I could.
“If they said the sky was green, and I could see it wasn’t green, and it was blue, I’d say, “Yes, the sky is green.” ‘Cause I never wanted it again,’” she continued.
Goldberg opened up more about the experience on “The View” Wednesday, saying her grandfather and father “OK’d that [her] mother get the shock treatment for two years” because “there was a time in this country when … any man involved in your life could make medical decisions for you.”
Sara Haines and Sunny Hostin expressed their “shock” that such treatment was used in Goldberg’s lifetime.
The actress’ memoir hits bookshelves next Tuesday.
Goldberg penned her story after Harris and her brother, Clyde K. Johnson, died in 2010 and 2015, respectively.
“They’ve been gone awhile now … so I think I just was starting to forget a lot of stuff,” she explained to viewers of her timing. “Everyone’s gone, and so I have memories of things that happened, but I don’t have specific dates or times.”
The “Sister Act” star joked that the book’s events “may or may not have happened exactly” as she describes.
Joy Behar noted that memoirs do not necessarily have to be “factual” as much as “true.”
Harris died after suffering a stroke, with Johnson dying five years later from a brain aneurysm.
On her 68th birthday in November 2023, Goldberg said on “The View” that she felt “lucky” to have “outlived” her sibling.
