Whoopi Goldberg will not be appearing on The View in the upcoming weeks after making controversial remarks about the Holocaust.
In a statement obtained by E! News on Feb. 1, ABC president Kim Godwin said she is suspending Goldberg for two weeks, effective immediately, due to "her wrong and hurtful comments."
Godwin continued, "While Whoopi has apologized, I've asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments. The entire ABC News organization stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends, family and communities."
A source tells E! News what Goldberg's suspension "is a surprise to most of the staff."
"There are a lot of text messages being sent around right now. Tomorrow will be interesting," the insider noted. "Discussions have already begun about how this will be addressed on the show tomorrow."
News of the suspension comes just a day after Goldberg said that the Holocaust was "not about race" during a discussion about a Tennessee school board's recent decision to remove Maus, a graphic novel about the atrocity, from an eighth-grade language arts curriculum. At the time, the 66-year-old actress claimed that the Holocaust was "about man's inhumanity to man."
Her commentary quickly sparked backlash online, prompting Goldberg to issue an apology hours after the episode had aired.
"On today's show, I said the Holocaust is not about race, but about man's inhumanity to man," she wrote on Twitter. "I should have said it is about both. As Jonathan Greenblatt from the Anti-Defamation League shared, 'The Holocaust was about the Nazi's systematic annihilation of the Jewish people—who they deemed to be an inferior race.' I stand corrected."
Goldberg added in her statement, "The Jewish people around the world have and always will have my support and that will never waiver. I'm sorry for the hurt that I have caused."
Later on in the evening, the Sister Act alum addressed the matter during an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, saying that it was "never ever ever ever my intention" to "upset" people.
"I thought it was a salient discussion because as a Black person, I think of race as being something that I can see," she explained to host Stephen Colbert. "People were very angry, and they said, 'No, no, we are a race,' and I understand."
She said she will "work hard" to change her thinking in the future.
E! News reached out to Goldberg's rep for comment following the suspension but has not heard back.
On the Feb. 1 episode of The View, Goldberg apologized again for her comments and said that situation has been a learning experience.
"I said something that I feel a responsibility for not leaving unexamined because my words upset so many people, which was never my intention," she told viewers. "And I understand why now and for that I am deeply, deeply grateful because the information I got was really helpful and helped me understand some different things."
In her on-air apology, Goldberg added that the Holocaust "is indeed about race, because [Adolf] Hitler and the Nazis considered Jews to be an inferior race."
She shared, "I regret my comments, as I said, and I stand corrected. I also stand with the Jewish people, as they know and y'all know, because I've always done that."