Nash ended up rewriting one of her lines in 1995’s ‘Boys on the Side’

Niecy Nash (left); Whoopi Goldberg (right).Credit : Jamie McCarthy/Getty; John Nacion/Variety via Getty

Niecy Nash was not afraid to speak her mind on the set of her first film.

Nash, who stars in the new TV series All’s Fair, appeared on the Oct. 28 episode of The View. Cohost Sunny Hostin noted this year, the 1995 film Boys on the Side turns 30. It was Nash’s first professional acting job, and the movie starred The View cohost Whoopi Goldberg.

“I played ‘Woman in the diner,’” Nash, 55, said. “My scene was with this beautiful woman right here [Goldberg] and I almost got fired because she kept laughing and messing up the scene.”

Nash had an unorthodox solution to Goldberg’s giggles. “I yelled ‘Cut!’ You’re not supposed to do that! I yelled ‘Cut!’ and I said, ‘Hey, she’s messing up the scene!’ ”

Whoopi Goldberg in ‘Boys on the Side’.Suzanne Hanover/Canal +/Regency/Alcor/Kobal/Shutterstock

Boys on the Side was a dramedy that starred Goldberg, Mary-Louise Parker and Drew Barrymore. It was also one of Matthew McConaughey’s earliest roles. It was directed by Herbert Ross and was his final film before his death in 2001.

When Goldberg, 69, admonished Nash for yelling ‘cut,’ Nash told her, “Girl, they’re not gonna fire you! They gotta know I didn’t do it.” She added, “But I have loved you ever since.”

Goldberg said the fault lay with neither her nor Nash, but with the line Nash was supposed to say, “It was a line that no human being would say,” she remembered, though neither she nor Nash could recall the line.

“The director said, ‘What is the problem?  I said, ‘People don’t talk like that,’” Nash said. “ And he said, ‘Well, what would you like to say?’ I said, ‘Girl, is that your friend in the bathroom? You better get in there because she throwing up.’ ”

Niecy Nash.Chris Polk/FilmMagic

Goldberg was proud of Nash for speaking up. “The line made no sense and she fixed it and that’s what you have to do,” she said, before joking, “Maybe not yell cut in the middle.”

Back in 2016, Nash told PEOPLE that when she was cast in Boys on the Side, she didn’t even have an agent. Instead, she told the casting director, “I’m broke. I have a baby. I need a job.” (Nash had welcomed son Dominic in 1991 with her ex-husband Don Nash. They also share daughters Donielle and Dia).

After Boys on the Side, Nash appeared widely as a guest star on TV. She broke through on the comedy Reno 911!, which premiered in 2003. She won her first Emmy in 2023 for Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.

Speaking to PEOPLE in 2024, Nash said her next goal was “becoming a movie star. Mother’s mastered the small screen.” She added of her plans, “You gotta watch and see. Buy a ticket to my movie, honey!”

Nash said of her career path, “I knew that the call on my life was to entertain, and I get up every morning and I live in gratitude that I get to do it every day. I really do.”