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The View hosts have weighed in on Janet Jackson’s recent controversial remarks regarding Vice President Kamala Harris’s racial identity.

In a new interview with The Guardian, the singer and sister of Michael Jackson regurgitated a false claim made by Donald Trump that Harris is not Black.

“She’s not Black. That’s what I heard. That she’s Indian,” Jackson said, admitting that although she hadn’t “watched the news in a few days,” she was told somebody had “discovered [Harris’s] father was white.”

“What she did was spread misinformation,” host Ana Navarro said on the latest episode of the daytime talk show. “I think it’s irresponsible when you have a platform the way Janet Jackson does, to use that platform carelessly to spread misinformation based on a racist allegation by Donald Trump. It was Donald Trump who tried to say Kamala Harris just turned Black.”

Last month, Trump made headlines when he made the unhinged assertation that Harris only recently “became a Black woman” to suit her political agenda.

Whoopi Goldberg, meanwhile, stepped in to defend Jackson. “You know, sometimes I’ve said stuff. And you know, I was wrong. But people want you to say something right away. You know, when people are coming at you saying, ‘Hey, you’re not paying – you’re dumb, you don’t know’ – you don’t want to answer people,” she said.

“And it is a pain in the butt, I have to tell you. Sometimes people get it wrong and they’re wrong, they made a mistake, they were wrong, it happens. Anybody who says it doesn’t happen to every one of us, multiracial or not, we all do it. So, okay, a little grace for the girl, alright?” Goldberg said, arguing that Jackson is “a musician,” not “a political animal.”

While Navarro acknowledged that Jackson has the “right to endorse, support, or not support” whomever she chooses, she noted that the singer has still not yet owned up to her mistake.

“We forget that we live in information silos. This is so different from how the media was even 10 years ago,” Alyssa Farah Griffin added. “My guess is she’s not looking at great sources of media.”

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Sunny Hostin went on to say that “regardless of whether Janet Jackson thinks she’s Black, white, or Indian, the very fact that she’s in the room deconstructs, in my view, the alleged societal norms we’ve seen in the nearly 250 years of this country of what a presidential candidate looks like.”

“I think that’s what matters most, and I think that when you’re biracial or multiracial, you do get to identify yourself in any way you choose to identify yourself,” Hostin, who is biracial, continued. “It’s unfortunate that Janet Jackson, an icon, admittedly said, ‘I don’t know, I haven’t been reading the news these past few days.’ I don’t know if it comes from misinformation, I don’t know if it comes from a lack of information, all I know is I don’t want to give it this much air.”

Yesterday, it emerged that Jackson’s apparent “apology” for her comments about Harris was not authorized by the “That’s the Way Love Goes” singer.

It was widely reported by several outlets that Janet had issued an apology through a man named Mo Elmasari, who claimed to be her manager.

However, it has since been corrected that Jackson is, in fact, managed by her brother, Randy, and that the unusually worded “apology” did not come from Jackson.

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Strictly Come Dancing professional Jowita Przystal has revealed the secret code that she and her dance partner Pete Wicks use in training sessions.

The Only Way is Essex star Wicks is competing in this year’s Strictly competition along 14 more celebrities vying for the glitterball trophy. He is partnered with Przystal, who has worked on the show since 2021.

Appearing on Wicks’s Staying Relevant podcast, which he co-presents with former Made in Chelsea star Sam Thompson, Przystal discussed her bond with Wicks – and said they instantly “connected” when they first met.

Kicking the programme off, Thompson told Przystal he couldn’t believe she had been partnered with “Britain’s sexiest man”, to which the dancer replied: “Me too!”

Przystal reflected on the first time they met, saying they “didn’t dance much” as they couldn’t stop making each other laugh.

Speaking further about their special bond, she explained they sometimes don’t need to speak to each other to communicate in training – they simply look at each other.

“Me and Pete, we have a little code already. We don’t talk. Sometimes we don’t need to speak, we just know,” explained the dancer, demonstrating her stare.

Przystal added: “We went into a circle and all the female pros switch after one eight of the dance, and we just go around each other. Every time I went to Pete, we were just laughing. We didn’t even dance. It was fun.”

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She continued: “We had this final dance together when we learnt a little bit of the routine with the choreographer. Funnily enough, they video it and sent it around to the group so everyone can remember the steps and we were in the video!”

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Przystal said that when they re-met on the pairing day, they were both wearing cowboy boots and similar outfits.

Wicks’ co-host Thompson said that Wicks called him after he had met Przystal for the first time, and seemed completely overjoyed.

Thompson said: “I don’t want to embarrass Pete but he was like, ‘I couldn’t believe it, we had the same socks, she’s the same kind of person as I am’”.

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Przystal revealed later that Wicks calls her his “little ray of sunshine”.

Appearing on BBC Two’s spin-off It Takes Two on Monday night, Wicks revealed that his favourite part of being in the competition is being in the rehearsal room with Przystal.

Wicks told presenter Janette Manrara: “I am loving it, and I didn’t think I would.

“I am loving the whole learning experience and being in the rehearsal room with Jowita is my favourite bit. She makes me happy every day.”

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Ryan Murphy has responded to Erik Menendez’s accusation that his Netflix series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story is“dishonest”.

The Menendez brothers were convicted of the 1989 murders of their parents, José and Kitty. They were arrested for first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder outside their home in March 1990 and sentenced to life in prison in 1996. In 2024, new evidence emerged that has the potential to set them free.

Erik Menendez, who is serving a life sentence at the RJ Donovan Correctional Facility in California alongside Lyle, has claimed Murphy’s series, starring Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch, does not accurately portray their crime, and accused the creator of releasing “disheartening slander”.

Speaking to Entertainment Tonight, Murphy defended the Netflix series, saying: “I think it’s interesting that he’s issued a statement without having seen the show. I know he hasn’t seen the show in prison. I hope he does see the show.”

Monsters includes the harrowing sexual abuse that Lyle and Erik alleged to have been perpetrated by their father José (Javier Bardem) but Erik Menendez has accused Murphy of distorting the truth.

Murphy responded: “Listen, I think it’s really, really hard if it’s your life to see your life up on screen. I think it’s been 30 years since that case – that’s hard.”

He added that “if you watch the show, I would say 60 to 65 per cent” of the scripted narrative centres “around the abuse and what they claim happened to them. And we do it very carefully and we give them their day in court and they talk openly about it.”

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“We present the facts from their point of view,” the Dahmer director said. “We spent three years researching it – all of that is true.”

In his statement, shared to X/Twitter, Menendez said: “I believed we had moved beyond the lies and ruinous character portrayals of Lyle, creating a caricature of Lyle rooted in horrible and blatant lies rampant in the show. I can only believe they were done so on purpose.

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“It is with a heavy heart that I say, I believe Ryan Murphy cannot be this naive and inaccurate about the facts of our lives so as to do this without bad intent.

“It is sad for me to know that Netflix’s dishonest portrayal of the tragedies surrounding our crime have taken the painful truths several steps backward – back through time to an era when the prosecution built a narrative on a belief system that males were not sexually abused, and that males experienced rape trauma differently than women.

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“Those awful lies have been disputed and exposed by countless brave victims over the last two decades who have broken through their personal shame and bravely spoken out. So now Murphy shapes his horrible narrative through vile and appalling character portrayals of Lyle and of me and disheartening slander.

He continued: “Is the truth not enough? Let the truth stand as the truth. How demoralizing to know that one man with power can undermine decades of progress in shedding light on childhood trauma. Violence is never an answer, never a solution, and is always tragic.

“As such, I hope it is never forgotten that violence against a child creates a hundred horrendous and silent crime scenes darkly shadowed behind glitter and glamour and rarely exposed until tragedy penetrates everyone involved. To all those who have reached out and supported me, thank you from the bottom of my heart.”