Star Jones says former "View" co-hosts were "hateful"

Star Jones is speaking out about how she was treated during her departure from The View in 2006.

“Those girls were hateful,” Jones says of her former co-hosts.

In a new interview in the November issue of Essence magazine, Jones also opens up about “falling into a depression” after losing her self-titled Court TV show last year; her ongoing dispute with Barbara Walters (“Barbara set me up”); and her divorce from Al Reynolds, which was finalized in September.

Responding directly to Reynolds’s infamous YouTube videos, in which he stated he “still loves” Star, Jones responds bluntly: “I’m not in love with him.”

Jones, who laid low after the abrupt cancellation of her Court TV show, is currently in talks to make a non-scripted TV comeback. The reason she’s ready to start over? A sense of renewal she says she gained after spending an Under The Tuscan Sun-style summer at an Italian villa with girlfriends, including Natalie Cole.

Posing poolside in a white dress and fireside in a slinky black number for the interview, the surprisingly svelte Jones – who dropped 160 lbs. after a 2003 gastric bypass surgery – also talks about getting back to dating.

While she doesn’t directly address her new relationship with executive chef Herb Wilson, whom she was photographed smooching in the stands at last month’s U.S. Open, she tells the magazine, “I want to fall in love again. I’m ready to love 24/7. I want happiness.” via