Julie Chen remains absent from The Talk; will she ever return?

One of the things that has always been appealing about The Talk to many has been its relative stability when it comes to panelists. Julie Chen, Sharon Osbourne, Sara Gilbert have all been there from the beginning, and Sheryl Underwood joined back in season 2. Eve is the only somewhat-new addition, but she’s been there a couple of years now.

With that said, The Talk is facing a strange quagmire when it comes to Chen’s status on the show moving forward. Technically, she has not formally left the CBS daytime series, but she has not appeared since her husband Les Moonves exited the network amidst sexual harassment and assault allegations. She still fulfilled her hosting duties on Big Brother last week, and signed off with the name Julie Chen-Moonves, something that she had never done professionally until that point. That has really been her biggest public comment on the matter to date.

Will Julie ever return to the series? That’s been one of the largest questions floating around out there the past week or so, and The Talk itself has not done a whole lot to squelch some of that conversation. They have addressed Moonves’ dismissal and Julie’s absence briefly, but they have not really focused too much time on it. Meanwhile, there are viewers split into different camps: Those who do not want to watch if she returns, and those who do not want to watch if she stays away. Maybe there is a middle ground in there, but social media tends to make it more divisive than it probably actually is.

Is it possible that Chen takes a couple more weeks off and returns at that point? Certainly, but whenever she does she has to expect that her husband will be a part of the conversation. We imagine that there are many different discussions that need to be had over the coming weeks, especially as Big Brother comes to a close.

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