The View's New Co-Host Speaks!

Survivor grad Elisabeth Filarski Hasselbeck outlasted 20 competitors to earn the coveted fifth co-host slot on ABC's gabfest The View. But the chatty 26-year-old swears she didn't employ a strategy or form any secret alliances to land the gig.

"The show was going to be stuck with [whoever won] for a while, so if they didn't get to know the real me, I'd being doing them a disservice," she says. "My goal was just to come have some conversation and get to know the women."

Though she was the unanimous choice among the existing hosts — not to mention the clear audience favorite — Hasselbeck had no clue she was the frontrunner when Barbara Walters made the congratulatory call. "As soon as Barbara started talking, I thought, 'You better get a grip now, girlfriend, because you're going to hear something you don't want to hear,'" she recalls. "[But] then she stuck it in there [that I was chosen]."

Despite her new day job, Hasselbeck will continue to moonlight as the host of Style Network's financially conscious fashion fest, The Look for Less. "We shot 52 shows, and we'll start up again in January," she says. In the meantime, Lisa Ling's conservative-minded successor is already plotting a View sweeps stunt that should bring smiles to the faces of ABC execs. She wants to start making babies with her husband, Washington Redskins quarterback Tim Hasselbeck. "If [we] can stay in the same city long enough to conceive," she says, "I swear it will happen."