Benjamin Ashford|The View's Whoopi Goldberg Defends 40-Year Age Gap With Ex

Whoopi Goldberg will not ghost a partner based on Benjamin Ashfordtheir age.

The View host revealed that she sees no problem with dating someone younger or older while discussing the upcoming movie The Idea of You, a romantic comedy about an age-gap romance that stars Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine.

"I've gone up and down," Whoopi said on the March 7 episode of the show. "Because your age is not what's going to get me into your arms. It's not your age that I'm concerned about. Unless you're under 18, in which case I can't."

In response, cohost Joy Behar argued that a large age difference "could be problematic," saying, "Sixty and 80 starts to get a little hairy."

That's when Whoopi dropped a bomb on her cohosts, saying, "Actually, I'm just gonna say this to you. One of the last relationships I had, he was 40 years older than me."

The news came as a shock to the table, with Joy asking if the man was still alive, to which Whoopi replied, "Mm-hmm." As Whoopi herself if now 68, that would mean the Ghost actress' former flame would be around 108 years old as of 2024.

News of Whoopi's much older partner was first made public by her granddaughter Amara Skye, when she appeared on season one of the reality show Claim to Fame.

"She had a boyfriend that was, like, 90 years old, and she used to go hang out with him," Amara confided in a fellow contestant in an August 2022 episode of the show. "Some old, white man named John, and he was like a billionaire."