On a lively segment about his Apple TV series, Colin Farrell turned a question about aging into a direct, humorous warning to Joy Behar: “the grim reaper is coming.” Behar laughed and pushed back, while Farrell also talked about fearing death and later faced o
On a bright Wednesday morning, Colin Farrell sat down at “The View” table to discuss season 2 of his hit Apple TV series “Sugar.” The conversation didn’t stay on set life for long.
Joy Behar. 83. leaned in after the panel had earlier talked about having a mid-life crisis and asked Farrell about a milestone: turning 50 this year on his May 31 birthday. Farrell responded the way he often does when the topic turns personal. “I love getting older. ” he said. before describing how. in his earlier years. he wrestled with existential questions about his life and impact.
“As you get older, that stuff kind of fades away, you know?” Farrell said. “Life is so short. If you’re lucky to live to 80 or 90, it’s just a blip.” Then he added a line that landed with weight on a daytime panel: “I think we don’t talk about death enough.”
Behar agreed, and Farrell kept going—moving from philosophy to blunt reality. “We all fear it. It’s the one thing that all of us,” he said.
Behar fired back with comic resistance, singing a number from “Dreamgirls” in a moment that felt like she was daring the idea itself. “Not me! I’m not going. And I am telling you, I’m not going!”
That’s when Farrell turned toward her and delivered the joke that became the clip. “That grim reaper is coming for you as well, sister! All of us!”
Behar contorted her face, then managed a quick, defiant punchline: “But not today!”
Still, Farrell didn’t let the moment float away as pure banter. He told the audience that conversations about death “shouldn’t be this big, fearsome thing,” but he also made clear he wasn’t pretending it didn’t scare him. He said he’s “not okay with it” at all.
Later in the interview. the seriousness flickered again under the humor when Farrell described a moment he said he wasn’t prepared for—an experience involving turbulence during an airplane flight. He was censored on air after appearing to say. “I s— myself” when he’s “in an airplane that hits turbulence” mid-flight.
“I don’t want to die! I want life to slow down,” he said. “I love getting older, but I love to tap the brakes a little bit.”
The exchange landed inside a larger pattern on “The View,” where legacy and mortality have come up more than once. A July 2024 moment featured moderator Whoopi Goldberg reminding the studio audience that “everybody’s gonna die.” And in a July 2023 episode. Goldberg talked about a mandate in her will that blocks her likeness from being used in a hologram after she dies.
“They don’t ask you, that’s the thing. They just do it, and then you go, ‘Hey, isn’t that Tupac?. Wait a minute, didn’t Tupac die?. What is he doing up on…’ Yeah, see, I don’t want that. It’s a little freaky, creepy,” Goldberg said then. She added, “Yeah, my estate doesn’t want it. My estate wants to be left alone.”.
For Farrell, the point kept circling back to the same human truth—death is inevitable, but it’s still hard to face. On “The View,” he dressed it in jokes first, then tightened the conversation into something more personal: he’s afraid, he wants time, and he wants it to slow down.
“Sugar” season 2 is now streaming on Apple TV, and the episode’s biggest takeaway may have been that a daytime talk show can still make mortality feel immediate—right there on live TV, with a punchline and a censored breath between them.
Colin Farrell The View Joy Behar grim reaper death conversation Sugar season 2 Apple TV May 31 birthday Dreamgirls