Sherri Shephard is a new woman!

With two divorces behind her and a 15-year-old special needs child at home, Sherri is back on set starring in Mr. Iglesias on Netflix as well as the talk show Dish Nation.

In a new interview with People, however, the star is opening up about her experience on the show that catapulted her to superstardom: The View.

“It was the most painful experience that I’ve ever gone through, but it was the best experience,” she said. “Barbara [Walters] was so hard on me. I cried for three years in my dressing room because she was so hard on me, but she did it out of love.”

Barbara offered her this advice: “I love you,” Sherri remembers her saying. “I just need you to read a book, dear, and learn to defend what you believe. And speak up.”

Sherri’s comments about Christianity and the LGBTQ community in 2014 caused a stink as well, but she later clarified her comments and apologized on the air.

“You love who you love,” she told People. “I’ve evolved. Look, my best friend, my best friend Tommy Borden, he’s been married to his husband, Jimmy, for the last 17 years. I couldn’t even make two marriages work past six years. Who am I to be judging anybody?”

“When people wanted to cancel me and take out full-page ads on me and take it outside The View, I would cry. Because I would go, ‘If you knew my heart.’ I came from doing standup and making people laugh and doing sitcoms.”

She added, “I wish we were a culture of loving and going, ‘Let’s just see, hold on before we go, click, your entire life is done, your livelihood. You can never come back from this.’ Now there are of course cases where it’s just like: You need to be in jail.”

“I thank Rosie O’Donnell to this day because when I was being asked to join The View, they offered me less than Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who had only done Survivor and worked for Puma, making the tennis shoes,” she quipped.

Honestly? We’re seeing Sherri in a whole new light. Read People magazine for the rest of the interview.