The View moderator Whoopi Goldberg has a reputation that precedes her in name, as her granddaughter Amara Skye Dean explained in a clip for Monday night’s episode of ABC’s reality competition series Claim to Fame.
In the clip, which was obtained exclusively by Entertainment Weekly, Dean is having a conversation with a fellow contestant named Dominique. The series takes a dozen people who are related to celebrities and puts them in a house together, where they must deduce who their fellow housemates are related to while keeping their own familial relationships a secret.
“I have a crazy story about my celebrity relative,” Dean told Dominique. “So, one time we were in an elevator, and they just start fartin … it was a fart war in there, it was going back and forth, having a good time.”
“So then, someone comes in — the elevator stopped right before we was supposed to go, and we almost rode it to the top,” she continued. “And they walked in, you just see them, and they’re like, [makes stink face]. We bust out laughing, but then my celebrity goes, ‘Did you just fart?’ to the new person.”
However, in a confessional moment, Dean admitted that she had to “tweak” the story because she wasn’t actually there at the time.
“But it was my favorite story that my grandma has told me about her, Robin Williams, and Billy Crystal standing in an elevator, and Robin Williams was just farting his life away,” she explained. “I guess they were Dutch Oven-ing each other, just basking in the ambiance of farts. And my grandma got her name because she likes to fart a lot, so … whoopie cushion, farts. And that’s how Caryn Johnson became Whoopi Goldberg.”
Dean was not kidding about her grandmother’s penchant for farting, as a cursory YouTube search reveals no shortage of moments that Goldberg has let it rip live on The View. She also discussed her famous moniker in a 2006 New York Times interview when asked how she wound up with the name “Whoopi.”
“Here’s the thing. When you’re performing on stage, you never really have time to go into the bathroom and close the door,” she said at the time. “So if you get a little gassy, you’ve got to let it go. So people used to say to me, You are like a whoopee cushion. And that’s where the name came from.”
When asked a follow-up question about how Goldberg can “possibly justify public acts of flatulence” when she had previously made the case against coming hair in public, Goldberg pulled no punches. “Is it bad manners if you say I really have to cut this?” she deadpanned.
We guess not — when you gotta cut one, you gotta cut one.
