Star Jones: 'I Feel Like I Was Fired'

If you've been quietly anticipating a Star Jones Reynolds-Rosie O'Donnell TV faceoff on "The View" this fall, sorry to disappoint: the suddenly-slim lawyer announced Tuesday that she's leaving the show.

She didn't announce a reason, but it's been widely speculated that she'd leave before Rosie O'Donnell came on the show to replace Meredith Vieira.

In an interview with People magazine, Jones Reynolds, 44, said her contract with the show was not renewed.

"What you don't know is that my contract was not renewed for the 10th season," she says in an upcoming issue of People. "I feel like I was fired."

An ABC rep did not return theshowbuzz.com's requests for comment.

Show creator Barbara Walters said Reynolds had known for several months that she would not be coming back, before Vieira's announcement in April that she was leaving.

"I would have loved for Star to have left and not said 'I was fired,' and not make it look like the program was somehow being cruel to her," said Walters.

Reynolds told People that she got the news her contract wouldn't be renewed days before news leaked that O'Donnell would be the show's newest addition.

O'Donnell has publicly criticized Jones for not revealing how she lost so much weight.

"Star says she's lost that weight through diet and exercise," O'Donnell told a TV reporter earlier this year. "Yeah, I'd like to see that b---h do a pushup."

Jones Reynolds says her last day will be sometime in mid-July. She says she's "not sure what the future holds."

She called her time on the show "the most amazing nine years of my entire professional and personal life."

Jones Reynolds has been a co-host on "The View" since the daytime show premiered in 1997.