Shock moment Joy Behar kisses married The View guest on the lips on live TV… and his wife's reaction is revealed

Joy Behar shocked the audience on Wednesday's episode of The View when she pulled married guest Anson Mount for a kiss on the mouth live on air. 

The Star Trek: Strange New Worlds actor, 53, had just walked out from backstage and was greeting all the panelists when the kiss took place. 

Mount, who's been married to photographer Darah Trang since 2018, first approached Whoopi Goldberg and Sara Haines before turning to greet 83-year-old Behar.

She embraced him and he kissed her on the cheek. Behar then puckered her lips, prompting Mount to lean in and kiss her on the mouth. 

She then reached around his side with her left arm and appeared to pull him in for an even longer kiss. 

After he sat down, the audience laughed as co-host Sunny Hostin handed him a tissue to wipe off Behar's lipstick from his mouth. 

The Daily Mail has reached out to representatives for The View, Mount and Behar for comment on the kiss. 

Hostin later quipped, 'no wonder Joy has been talking about you all morning' to which Behar replied, 'I'm old, but I'm not dead.'

'That's it, Joy, because I am,' Mount said in response to Behar's joke.

'Are you okay?' Goldberg asked Behar.

'I need a little bit of a touch-up,' she replied, adding, 'Last time he was here, he brought me flowers for my birthday, and it’s never been the same between us.'

'Well, I got married,' he stated. 

'That's what I mean!' Behar replied.

After the moment went viral, Mount revealed that his wife thought the on-air kiss with Behar was 'hilarious.'

'I asked my wife to promise me she wouldn’t divorce me. She thought it was hilarious,' he said in an interview with TV Insider. 

As for why the moment became a viral sensation, he said, 'I think people just assume that I’m not around anymore because I have two young kids. I think maybe they were surprised to see that I’m still alive.'

The actor said his last appearance on The View was 13 years ago.

'I brought her flowers for her birthday, and I guess I made an impression,' he joked. 'So, we’ll see what she does the next time.'

Mount and his wife share two daughters: Clover, four, and Violet, one.

Though Mount and Trang laughed off the moment, not all viewers were entertained.

'He’s married. She crossed the line,' one wrote underneath a TikTok video showing the kiss.

'He plays it off well but I think she crossed a line,' someone else added.

'What would the view think if a man did that to a woman,' another questioned.

Mount is best known for starring as Captain Christopher Pike on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Star Trek: Discovery.