Whoopi’s Monologues Return With A New Sisterhood On Stage
Whoopi Goldberg got her flowers on The View, and this time the bouquet came with a full-on theatrical reawakening.
Kerry Washington, Kara Young, Whitney White, and Danielle Pinnock sat with Whoopi to talk about The Whoopi Monologues, the new Lincoln Center Theater production reimagining Goldberg’s groundbreaking one-woman show for a new generation.
Back in 1984, Whoopi’s original Broadway monologues announced a performer who could seemingly become anyone — funny, wounded, loud, invisible, outrageous, devastating, fully human. Decades later, that writing is getting opened up by a group of women who understand exactly what it means to see a door where the industry once told you there was only a wall.
Washington, whose Simpson Street is producing with Lincoln Center Theater, spoke about watching Whoopi’s show as a child and realizing that storytelling could change what people thought was possible. That is the gorgeous full-circle of it all: a little girl sees Whoopi become everybody, grows up, and helps bring that work back with a new sisterhood around it.
Whitney White, who directs the production, made the smartest point of the conversation: the work does not need to be “fixed” for now. The writing is already alive. The point is to open it up, let a new company breathe through it, and show how current Whoopi’s characters still feel.
And then there is Danielle Pinnock, who INYIM has loved from Ghosts and those COVID-era character videos that made performance feel joyfully possible even when the whole world was stuck inside. Watching her talk about this role felt especially right. Pinnock said she used to take the 167Q bus from Teaneck, New Jersey to the Lincoln Center Library just to watch Whoopi’s one-woman show every weekend and stay encouraged as an artist.
Now she is stepping into the Jamaican Lady monologue as a first-generation Jamaican American, calling the role a human face for immigrant stories too often flattened into politics and headlines. That is where the production starts to feel less like a revival and more like a passing of the torch — one artist’s survival map becoming another artist’s homecoming.
Kara Young also spoke about taking on Fontaine, Whoopi’s unforgettable character whose humanity cuts through every lazy assumption people bring into the room. The whole conversation kept circling back to the same point: Whoopi’s genius was not only that she could transform. It was that she made people look again at the characters they thought they already understood.
The View Gives Whoopi Her Flowers
A few moments from the conversation captured the cast’s affection, the theatrical handoff, and the very real emotion of watching Whoopi hear how deeply her writing still moves artists. Video stills: ABC / The View / YouTube.
The Whoopi Monologues begins previews at Lincoln Center Theater’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater on July 7, 2026. For a work born from Whoopi saying, essentially, “I’m here”, the new production sounds like a chorus answering back: we are here, too.
Watch The Whoopi Monologues Cast On The View
Kerry Washington, Kara Young, Whitney White, Danielle Pinnock and Whoopi Goldberg discuss bringing the characters from Goldberg’s groundbreaking show back to the stage for a new generation.
Sources: Lincoln Center Theater lists The Whoopi Monologues at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater with previews beginning July 7, 2026; ABC / The View provided the official segment with Kerry Washington, Kara Young, Whitney White, Danielle Pinnock and Whoopi Goldberg; Playbill previously covered Danielle Pinnock’s Hashtag Booked comedy work and pandemic-era creative pivot; CBS Mornings notes Pinnock’s role as Alberta on Ghosts.
