‘The View’ Hosts Dress as TV Heroines for 2022 Halloween Show: Inside Their Epic Transformations

The View hosts paid tribute to some televisions greatest heroines on Monday — and PEOPLE has all the details of how it came together.

For the ABC daytime show’s annual Halloween show, Whoopi Goldberg, Sara Haines, Ana Navarro, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin and Alyssa Farah Griffin dressed up as characters from their favorite TV shows, including Bridgerton, Married… with Children and Sex and the City.

All was to honor “TV show icons” — the theme the women settled on after a visit from Elisabeth Moss inspired Goldberg to dress as June Osborne, the role Moss plays on the The Handmaid’s Tale.

“Whoopi spawned the entire theme this year,” The View’s Senior Producer Jamie Hammer tells PEOPLE. “We start putting the Halloween show together right at the beginning of September and typically, we hold idea meetings with the entire staff where everybody pitches a theme and other segments they think would be fun for the show. Once we have a list, we go to the ladies with the ideas we have and they pull a theme from there. But when Elisabeth was on, Goldberg loved her so much that she walked off set and said, ‘I want to do Handmaid’s Tale.’ And from there, we just started building.”

All were asked to suggest which female character they’d want to portray, with Costume Designer Fran Taylor coordinating the head-to-toe looks. “Each character they picked was very meaningful to them,” Hammer says. “It really came together very easily this year.”

Below, Hammer and Taylor take PEOPLE through each outfit, pointing out some of the things viewers might have missed watching from home.

WHOOPI AS JUNE, FROM THE HANDMAID’S TALE ABC/Lou Rocco

Hammer: When Whoopi first said The Handmaid’s Tale, I looked at Fran and said, “Is that really what Whoopi wants?” because plea lot of girls over the years have done that before. But they bought their costume at Party City; Fran came back with an idea to make it really special.

Taylor: With all going on in the world, Whoopi clearly wanted to make a statement with the [Gilead garb]. So we reached out to Lingua Franca — they’re an incredible female-owned fashion brand known for their hand-stitched sweaters; we’ve used them a few times on the show before, especially Joy, during the pandemic — and we had them embroider a message on the back of the cape that really embodies Whoopi’s stance.

Hammer: It was a very powerful moment. Fran came back with this idea and the second we showed it to Whoopi, Whoopi was done. She loved it.

Taylor: The cape reads “My body, my morals, my life, my choice, not yours.” And it’s just so gorgeous. It’s like art, you can frame it, it’s so beautiful.

Hammer: And then, in the opening trailer we did for the episode, there’s this very famous scene from The Handmaid’s Tale that’s set to the Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good.” And we recreated that with Whoopi on the streets of New York City and then walking into the studio — but we used Demi Lovato’s “Confident” instead.

SARA AS MOIRA ROSE, FROM SCHITT’S CREEK ABC/Lou Rocco

Taylor: Schitt’s Creek is truly one of Sarah’s favorite shows. She’s interviewed the cast before, she’s talked about it on the show a bunch; it’s very personal to her. So when she said she wanted to play Moira, we knew we couldn’t just give her one look.

Hammer: We’ve learned over the years that we have time to actually actually work in a costume change during the show. So for Sara, Ana, Sunny and Alyssa we said, ‘Let’s actually make two costumes for them to give them a chance to show off more than one look.”

Taylor: It’s really fun. We started, in the opening, with Sara sitting at Moira’s wig wall wearing this black latex dress and that skunk-colored hair. And then she changed into Moira’s pope costume, which she wore in the Schitt’s Creek finale.

Hammer: Sara did such a good job playing Moira, too. She’s so funny, she does the accent, the mannerisms — she really embraces the character. The actress in her comes to life.

ANA AS APRIL LOPEZ, FROM THE LOVE BOAT ABC/Lou Rocco

Taylor: Ana chose Charo’s character from The Love Boat because she wanted to play someone she identified with and Charo, back when Ana was younger, was one of the only funny, strong, talented Latinas on TV. So the second she said that, we knew we had to surprise her with Charo.

Hammer: We reached out to Charo and didn’t have to wait a day before we heard back. She loves our show, loves what it stands for and what it does for women, and immediately said yes.

Taylor: Nick Verreos, of Project Runway fame, helped us put us costumes together — he’s a master of it. And for Ana’s first look, we recreated a look Charo wore that featured a white blouse, red skirt, and oversized hat. And she carried her dog, ChaCha, who was dressed as a piñata.

Hammer: And Charo came in wearing that exact look!

Taylor: She did; it was the exact same outfit she wore 40 years ago on her first episode of The Love Boat. She said her sister actually made that costume for her and she still fits into it.

Hammer: Ana was so surprised! It was such a wonderful moment. And of course Charo stole the rest of the segment! She’s unbelievable, Charo, she really is.

Taylor: And then the second costume with did for Ana was Charo’s birthday costume she wore on the Love Boat, which Nick just did such a fabulous job with.

JOY AS PEGGY BUNDY, FROM MARRIED… WITH CHILDREN ABC/Lou Rocco

Hammer: Joy for me was the center of the show this year.

Taylor: I agree. I’ve been here 25 years and have done all of our Halloween costumes. This particular costume for Joy, even though it was so simple, was my favorite one on her. We wound up matching one of the outfits Katey Sagal wore as Peggy Bundy and it just gave Joy such a beautiful shape. She just glowed in it. She knew she never looked better.

Hammer: She looked exactly like Peggy Bundy — and acted just like her too. We recreated the scene in which Peggy is tossing a salad and Joy just mugged for the camera. She was pretty funny.

Taylor: It was uncanny. When I was watching the intro, I actually thought it was Peggy Bundy. I actually thought was her! I was like, “Why are you showing old footage of Peggy, shouldn’t you be showing Joy?” That’s how much she really looked like her.

Hammer: You know, she chose Peggy because she said Peggy is known as the antithesis of what a stay-at-home mom was supposed to act and look like. Peggy was strong, confident, opinionated — and those are all characteristics Joy has.

Taylor: I was just happy Joy liked it. When Joy stands up in her costume, and says, “I love my costume,” you know it’s a success.

ALYSSA AS CARRIE BRADSHAW, FROM SEX AND THE CITY ABC/Lou Rocco

Hammer: Alyssa is having her New York moment right now. She just moved from Washington, D.C., she just got married, she’s with this new group of friends — and what’s more symbolic of all that than Sex and the City?

Taylor: It’s funny ’cause Alyssa says that when she was younger, she wasn’t allowed to watch Sex in the City. It was a little too scandalous for her. But she would sneak over to friend’s house to watch it, and when all of her friends would talk about which character they were, she always felt like a Carrie. That’s why she chose the character.

Hammer: So we did two of Carrie’s most iconic looks for her. The first was the tutu outfit Sarah Jessica Parker wears in the opening credits.

Taylor: That’s the one where she’s walking down the street and she feels so confident and then the bus comes by and splashes her? We loved that so much we had to recreate that in our cold opening, but we took a little liberty and made it a little more than just a splash. Thankfully, Alyssa was such a good sport about it. She totally got the joke.

Hammer: And then we did Carrie’s Vivienne Westwood dress with feathered head piece that Carrie wore in the Sex and the City movie.

Taylor: Nick completely recreated that and it was absolutely perfect. We had people texting us saying, “Oh my God, can I borrow that after she’s done? I want to get married in it.”

SUNNY AS QUEEN CHARLOTTE, FROM BRIDGERTON ABC/Lou Rocco

Taylor: When Sunnny said she wanted to be the Queen from Bridgerton, I knew we were in luck because Nick actually worked on the costumes for the Netflix series. And he just created two of the most striking gowns I’ve ever seen.

Hammer: I mean, the costumes are over-the-top gorgeous.

Taylor: The wigs — Matthew, who is one of our hairstylists here, he created them by hand. The second wig Sunny wore, that was 10 lbs. on her head. The other one, the white one, was also heavy but a little less. And you look at them and they’re just extraordinary. Our team really went all out this year on the hair.

Hammer: Also the fun thing is, these costume and wig changes, they all happened during the commercial breaks. It’s not like the show closed down.These were quick changes behind the scenes!

Taylor: It was 15 minutes. I set my stopwatch, 15 minutes! When you look at these elaborate looks, it really is remarkable.

Hammer: The other thing we did as a special surprise is we got Golda Rosheuvel to send a message to Sunny. Actually, it was Nick who got in touch with her, since he worked on Bridgerton, and she was so excited because she adores Sunny, so that was another special moment.

BRIAN TETA AS TED LASSO, FROM TED LASSO ABC/Lou Rocco

Taylor: We also have to talk about Brian Teta, our fearless leader and executive producer. He loves Halloween — loves getting dressed up, loves when the hosts dress up. So when we asked him what TV character he wanted to dress up as, he chose Ted Lasso. And we recreated Jason Sudeikis’s costume from the show.

Hammer: He looked great.

Taylor: Brian’s their coach, so it worked that he was playing a coach. And he jumped on being a part of the action. He said, “If you believe, I believe.”

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ABC/Lou Rocco

Hammer: It’s really important that the hosts buy into it. Because when they feel good about it and it’s something they feel good in, it completely changes the entire dynamics of the show. I’ve been doing this for 19 years, and I can tell you, this is my favorite year because the theme really showed what each lady stood for a little bit and they just had the best time with it.

Taylor: I also loved the set this year.

Hammer: Oh the set is one of my favorite sets we’ve ever done. Mark Herba, our set designer really went above and beyond. Our set is a black and white set, which has not been done. What most people do is when they want a black and white look, they do that in post. But we created a black and white set to make it like an old fashioned TV sitcom and play homage to some of the great TV shows of the past. I just thought it was so cleaver and creative. The team just did such an amazing job.

ABC/Lou Rocco

Taylor: I also have to just shout out our annual kids costume segment, because we do something no other show does and that’s Hot Topics kids costumes. We take Hot Topics our ladies have talked about all year long and turn them into relevant kids costumes. Our audience loves it; it’s always a crowd-pleaser, and this year’s crop of costumes are truly hilarious. Ashley Alderfer-Kaufmam, our amazing wardrobe supervisor, leads that segment and we couldn’t have done it without her.

Hammer: Every year, in every aspect, we try to raise the bar. This might just be the best Halloween show we’ve done yet. But tomorrow, we’ll start collecting ideas for the 2023 show and see where we go next.

The View airs weekdays (11 a.m. ET) on ABC.