Whoopi Goldberg is joining ‘The View’

IT’S Whoopi time!

Comedian Whoopi Goldberg vows to dress neater, use words such as “dagnabbit” instead of cursing and do her best to stop her co-hosts from talking over one another when she takes the moderator chair on “The View” on Sept. 4.

“It’s great conversation to be had with these women,” Goldberg said during an interview Wednesday, shortly after it was announced that she’d be joining ABC’s daytime gabfest. “They’re very diverse in their thinking, they’re very different, and they have different views. And I love being part of that.”

But Goldberg, 51, said it is not her goal to be controversial.

“I’m just planning to be me,” Goldberg said. “You know, I’m not Rosie and I don’t have any shoes to fill. I’m not going to pretend like I can do what she can do with an audience. . . . Hopefully I’ll be just as interesting.”

She was referring to Rosie O’Donnell, who left the program after an on-air fight with co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck in May. Goldberg fills that vacancy.

During an interview, executive producer Barbara Walters said she never imagined she would be able to hire “one of the best-known women in the world” to sit on the show Walters created 10 years ago.

“She brings us everything because she is funny and edgy and brilliant,” Walters said. Known for her salty humor and liberal politics, Goldberg has served as a guest co-host on the show 14 times. She said she hopes she and her co-hosts will have “spirited disagreements” instead of fights. “Any time you spend time with people and you don’t agree with something and you get into a discussion and it’s heated, of course sparks are going to fly,” Goldberg said, “but that’s OK.” Brian Frons, president of daytime for the Disney-ABC Television Group, said Wednesday that the network is still discussing options for the slot vacated by Star Jones Reynolds in 2006.

maria.elena.fernandez @latimes.com