Althought she's not too pleased with the manner in which she was let go from "The View," Nicolle Wallace is handling the very public situation with grace.
"I wish the show the best, but [they] did lose [their] happiest employee," she says in a candid interview with Variety, the very magazine that first published the news of Wallace's dismissal from the daytime talk show.
ABC executives hired George W. Bush's former communications chief last September to sit opposite Whoopi Goldberg, Rosie O'Donnell and Rosie Perez at the Hot Topics table on the show's 18th season, but they decided less than a year later that the 42-year-old Republican wasn't "bickering" enough with her co-hosts.
The news completely caught Nicolle – and the rest of America – off guard, especially since she says she never received any indication that producers were unhappy with her performance.
"I had never had one note from anybody inside the entire organization during the entire season," she said. "No one said a word to me. Maybe I should have seen it coming. Not after a single show, a single Hot Topic or a single interview."
Wallace adds that reps from ABC never personally communicated to her that she had been let go, even after the story came out.
"They never called me," she continued. "The night [Variety's] second story ran, they summoned my agent and told me they'd like to consider me for a contributor role, and they also made me an offer at ABC News to do the conventions and debates."
Nicolle ultimately declined the offer because she said a once-a-week gig wouldn't give her the type of presence she would need to consider the job worth her while.
Despite dissatisfaction from the show's execs, however, Wallace's presence is stronger than ever among her loyal fans.
"Everywhere I go, people stop me and they're like, 'Where can we send a letter?'" Wallace said of her supportive followers. "I'm like, 'Don't send a letter — you're going to get me in trouble.' Then I think, 'Why am I protecting these people? They fired me.'"
In spite of all the drama, Wallace did say she re-signed a two-year contract as a contributor for MSNBC's “Morning Joe.”
"I don't wish ['The View'] anything but roaring success," she said, "but it's sort of like a breakup. If you're dating the quarterback and then you go out with the hockey player, you just go to the hockey games. I don't think I'll still go the football games."
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