Rosie O’Donnell on Ellen, Madonna, Trump and 40 Years in the Queer Spotlight

I like that Rosie's had old interview clips from her original talk show uploaded to her YouTube channel.

Has she been invited to the opening of the new wing of Barbra's mall yet?

Grey hair can look good on some people.

Love her & that interview Op.

She's only been out of the closet for about 20 years. Remember that old gossip about her paying people to scrub stories about her being gay off the internet?

R5 Who cares about a more hostile environment from 20 years ago?

She is a force of nature now for all of us.

I know it's not exactly breaking news but if what Rosie said in that interview is true Ellen is a real piece of work.

Go Rosie!

I don’t want to know her IRL but I adore Ro and wish her the best

Yes, Ellen seems like a psycho—remember that weird episode with the rescue dog she had to give up where she was uncontrollably sobbing about it on TV? Ellen is a boozer and a user and a loser.

Hey Geri Blank at R9, I didn't know you were buds with Ellen, dish it sister! Dish!

You can smell she is lesbian from outer part of universe.

Can’t help it. I have always liked Rosie. I would love to know her IRL.

"When she started third grade, she couldn’t read. In one year, she was reading Harry Potter."

Ooh, be careful there, Ro.

Why doesn't anybody ever ask her about Nell Carter or Ed McMahon?

I can't stand this bitter nasty bulldyke

Rosie was legally married to Michelle. She acts like they were just in a relationship.

.....

Nothing like gays destroying other gays.

Some sick fuckers in this thread.

Damn Ellen sounds like such an asshole.

Yuck. She looks and sounds like my ex's now-dead lesbian bull-dyke alcoholic sister. I hated that loud-mouthed cow.

Rosie O'Donnell interviews are always interesting to me. Same as Courtney Love.

How bad could Bill Geddie have been to Rosie? Sherri Shepherd gave him a loving tribute on the show today. Can Rosie share power with anybody? Or is it always her way or the highway?

Seems like Ellen DeGeneres was trying to reach out to her recently and yet Rosie still brings up that sob story about her snubbing her on Larry King. How many times is she going to tell that story? Surprised she didn't bring up her troubles with Whoopi Goldberg again. Or her kerfuffle with Kelly Ripa.

R6- Force of nature?

Rosie O'LESBO is a BULLY 👿

She looks like the dykiest dyke who ever dyked.

[quote] Hey Geri Blank

Oh, dear.

Rosie supports Dylan Mulvaney. Next.

What drug(s) are being taken by Ro? She never came across like that. But she is a bit of a bully in the way that she keeps beefs going imo

Yikes! She looks like the kind of person you do not want to be behind at the grocery store when you were checking out! I can just hear it now"that kielbasa sausage was a dollar off!!! I KNOW I saw the sign!!! GET YOUR MANAGER NOW!!!!!!"

Rosie's teen romances were probably platonic crushes on pretty straight girls, and she was the funny, non-threatening tomboy sidekick. She still picks at every wound- whether real or imagined- she ever received from a woman, relishing the hurt.

Did she have her lips removed?

Rosie supports Dylan Mulvaney and CHILDren transitioning. Sorry. I lost all respect for her. Good riddance.

"Seems like Ellen DeGeneres was trying to reach out to her recently and yet Rosie still brings up that sob story about her snubbing her on Larry King."

And that whole thing about having tee shirts made saying "I DON'T KNOW ROSIE" or whatever? It would be disturbing enough if she just had one made and wore it herself, but to have many made and force her friends and co-workers to take sides by literally labeling themselves? Who on earth does a thing like that? And it's so strange how she freely admits to this kind of behavior, like she has no idea how bat-shit crazy it is.

Great interview, OP. Thanks for posting it.

Frankly, I wish she had her own talk show now, perhaps not only with show biz types but also politically relevant people who could hopefully move some of the tRumpers and neo-conservatives in this crazy world.

She's mean and nasty. I like a badass, don't get me wrong, but she reminds me of someone you could never reason with no matter how strong your arguments. Her personal life is hers to have, but her public persona proves she's probably a horror story to sustain a worthwhile relationship with.

Life in Malibu? Oh honey, it'll take a shotgun filled with elephant tranquilizer darts to mellow that crazy bitch.

She looks smashing!

She's a very handsome woman.

[QUOTE] Nothing like gays destroying other gays. Some sick fuckers in this thread.

I don't understand the hate for her on here. Yeah she can be annoying ("Liars get Cancer!") but there are so many who are far worse than her.

She’s a renaissance lez now?

All of Rosie's "I saw a Broadway show..." stories end with her sobbing backstage and being consoled by show's lead. Then, "I hate crying in public!"

I'll never understand why she threw her career away. At one point, her show was bigger than Oprah's, and she was more influential than Oprah with the general public. When Rosie promoted something on her show, which she did often, that shit sold! She was behind the success of the Harry Potter books in the US, among many other things. I miss her old Kmart commercials with Penny Fuller.

How hard is it to be nice and behave yourself, especially when you're making $25 million a year? Can you imagine having that kind of money and power, and then throwing it all away because you couldn't control yourself?

I'll always like Rosie for saying that Trump "is a snake oil salesman" long before people got to know him.

Hard to pick a team here , both rabid, bitter twats. Rosie should look at the “man in the mirror” and wonder why she has so many feuds with l and sundry.

Does she still frequent the DL? 👀

Did you read the article r41 or are you saying you don’t understand her reasoning behind walking away from her show?

When she first went after Trump did she not think he would retaliate?

She looks like Trump, I bet they share DNA. Lots of back-and-forth between Ireland and Scotland, especially Northern Ireland.

She used to be the Queen of Nice. Not kidding that was her nickname.

Rosie burdens children by adopting them. She's like a weird cat lady without the cats.

I liked the Rosie O'Donnell Show. It was fun, light, fresh and she had great guests. However, I haven't been able to stand Rosie for almost 20 years now. I wish she would just go away and take her creature friend Madonna with her. I don't like Trump at all, but she seems to forget that she attacked him first. If he had attacked her first, she would have retaliated. He ended up hitting her harder than she hit him and she's been crying about it ever since. She's had feuds with Tom Selleck, Kelly Ripa, Whoopi Goldberg, Barbara Walters, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Ellen Degeneres and probably hundreds more. She still defends Madonna. When you really care about someone, you tell them to get help when they've lost their mind. You don't support their behavior. She once attacked Walters about her relationship with her daughter. What kind of relationship does Rosie have with HER kids? Doesn't she have a daughter who ran away and doesn't want to speak to her anymore? Rosie's turned super butch recently because it's trendy. I wouldn't be surprised if she started using They/Them pronouns. She's an attention whore. Many years ago she said that most gay people are not stereotypes (like butch and femme) and yet she's turned into a big fat stereotype of the crazy dyke. She checks all the boxes. Go away Rosie. Nobody cares anymore.

Rosie's first Show lasted only six seasons. How did she make so much money in that time to sustain her for the rest of her life? She also lost money on that ill-fated magazine of hers and the Boy George Musical and yet she still lives quite lavishly. Did I read somewhere that her brother invested her money wisely or something like that?

I forgot how influential her show was. I kind of admire that she left before it got stale.

Rosie is just very emotional and let things get to her way too easy. And she's still all about receiving validation and support from those she validated and supported in the past. She's in the Hollywood buiz for how long and still expects total friendship loyalty? That's just sad. But maybe that's why I love Rosie so much.

I can see her point scoffing about The View, a show that is supposed to be about women's point of view, being run by men (Gedde in particular) telling them to care more about some lipstick shade than news that have an impact on women everywhere.

Just because Rosie doesn't like those kinds of topics doesn't mean that other people don't want to hear about them. Rosie's show was quite frivolous itself with her flinging koosh balls out into the audience and pretending to last after Tom Cruise. But on The View everything had to be serious and political to meet her approval.

"Just because Rosie doesn't like those kinds of topics doesn't mean that other people don't want to hear about them. Rosie's show was quite frivolous itself..."

Yes, but that was its stated purpose from the start, so I don't know why you'd expect it be any different.

Rosie O’Donnell is still quite nuts.

R20 what happened to her?

Just read the interview...really good, actually.

I don't think Rosie "attached" Trump. One thing she doesn't specifically identify as irritating: Miss USA Contestant was *kissing a girl*. So, Rosie probably felt like: Why should she (contestant) have to apologize for that?

In retrospect, Rosie was more than correct about Trump. He was a huge hypocrite trying to act like a moral compass for young women's behavior. Then she brought out the facts about him using bankruptcy to ditch his creditors. And he's known as some type of financial wizard.

Ellen sounds awful: I'm sorry but I don't remember saying that ("I'm not friends with Rosie"). Go watch your interview on Larry King!

Rosie printing up T-shirts was stupid, but I can understand being incredulous about Ellen disavowing their friendship.

The way Rosie talks about her deceased ex-wife is odd, as if the ex-wife were an employee.

Love how they DID try to ditch kathy Najimy in that horrible witch franchise (after she clearly stated that Sarah Jessica is a CUNT and she loves the blonde one who hates the entire cast) Her name escapes me- Samantha

That Koosh Ball hit me in the CUNT!!!! It was like a kick from Stevie Nicks.

The mass media was complicit in the formulation of this character that we are calling Donald Trump. I blame [The Apprentice creator] Mark Burnett fully for creating a show that was fiction and selling it as fact. There was no boardroom at Trump Tower. They created a boardroom with fake flats and walls. There was no big organization of Trump running the world. He was not a billionaire.

F&F R49 for giving me PTSD.

That is just a magat. Nothing important

Why did you walk away from your show in 2002? I’ve seen 9/11 cited as a reason.

First was Columbine — April 20, 1999 — and I had a breakdown. I couldn’t believe that I was in this position of perceived power, not actual but perceived, and children were being shot in their schools and the NRA was not being challenged. I thought, “Well, you know what? Screw it. I’m going to stand up to the NRA.” So Columbine was definitely the trigger and then, two years later, 9/11.

[quote] Rosie is just very emotional

I believe that's called bipolar.

Team Rosie

Team Rosie here too.

She is emotional. She cares. She’s honest.

She's also bat-shit crazy

I believe she is conscientious and reliable.

In fact, I'd trust her with my life.

I would rather have lunch and a conversation with her than probably 98% of the people on this board. There's maybe 2% intelligent or witty people here and 98% self-loathing superficial clowns.

Are all these "I Love Rosie" posts just from one person? Hmmm. R71, if you're dumb enough to trust your life to someone you only know from TV, then you deserve to lose it.

Rosie’s eyes look so angry

Rosie vs Ripa feud P. 1

Ripa the hypocrite P. 2 =

Rosie calls her out (which I agree with) =

[quote] "Life in Malibu hasn’t mellowed the fearlessly outspoken actress and podcaster."

It's Malibu now? I don't keep up. Also: I'm still a fan.

[quote] How did she make so much money in that time to sustain her for the rest of her life?

She owned her show and it was the #1 daytime show for awhile. It's the same way that Oprah got so rich. Rosie walked away from her show with around $125 million. If she had stayed and behaved herself, she'd be a billionaire today. She's always lived fairly modestly for someone of her net worth. The only extravagant thing she bought was the Miami vacation house on Star Island. She admits that she can't live as extravagantly as she used to, because she doesn't work much anymore.

There are a lot of things about Rosie I dislike but I admire that she called out Trump long before he came President, and she also called out Woody Allen and Michael Jackson long before other celebrities started to steer clear of them.

[quote]I'll never understand why she threw her career away. At one point, her show was bigger than Oprah's, and she was more influential than Oprah with the general public.

Same here. She was HUGE in the 90s, movies, her own talk show, always in the media. And then she just shit all over everything and threw it away.

She walked away from it because it was detrimental to her mental health.

And because she’d already earned enough.

Not everybody has to accumulate fame and riches.

Everything is detrimental to her mental health. She had a great gig with the talk show.

Rosie O'Donnell is crazy, but I still like her, she's exceptionally loud, but she speaks truth from the heart. ❤ :-)

Great gig? If she wasn’t enjoying it at the end, it wasn’t so great for her.

Yes, she’s had mental health struggles. She talks about them.

Anyone who has fuck-you money and isn’t loving what they’re doing should be walking away.

How sad that when Rosie brought up other out lesbians of the 90s (Melissa and k.d.), the interviewer had no idea who they were.

And she has a crafts room in her house.

I wonder if Rosie ever calls Madonna and says WTF? Your face looks like a fetus.

r33 She has her own talks show on Own and it tanked. Rosie is good when produced and reigned in. When left to produce herself she is a nightmare because she has bad ideas that no one says no to. Remember on the view when they got rid of the desk and were sitting around on bean bags with legs crossed and bare feet or some shit? Yeah that lasted a day.

I respect Rosie for believing in something - namely protecting children. I would never have walked away from the cash cow that was her show.

She said Ellen hired a lot of the people from her show.

I'm surprised she's still friends with Madonna. She said Madonna was a good friend when Trump was attacking her.

The word ‘friend’ appears to have a different meaning in the entertainment industry.

She had the best imitation of trump on The View. Spot on.

R89, "The Rosie Show" failed because the producers just wanted her to copy the old show.

Rosie was allowed to try her own ideas after the low ratings, but it was too late to save the show.

Her OWN show was also filmed in Chicago, and had trouble booking celebrity guests from NY and LA. The big stars would make the trip to Chicago for Queen Oprah, but not for Rosie.

The producers also rented Rosie a penthouse in Trump's Chicago tower in 2011.

She actually moved in, before saying she wasn't comfortable there.

Rosie said she dated a man and lived with him at some point. Does anybody know who this man was?

Nathan Lane?

,,,,,

The salt and pepper hair looks good.

[quote] "The salt and pepper hair looks good."

Agreed. Related, but not: Andie McDowell looks great with it too.

[quote] I'll never understand why she threw her career away. At one point, her show was bigger than Oprah's, and she was more influential than Oprah with the general public.

Bullshit! That never happened.

If you look at all of the things that Rosie likes, except for pussy, she's very much a DL gay guy of a certain age. Down to the same cultural references and TV shows.

Rosie's staff hated her on the OWN show. It was just another in her endless line of unhappy people who work on her shows. When they were told the show was being cancelled, she was in NY sampling wedding cake for one of her numerous weddings. And it's hard to mold yourself as a champion for racial equality when she mocked Asians. Somewhat poetic justice that her son married an Asian.

I tried to watch the American Gigilo show and it was fucking awful. Rosie was in the damn thing and even she hated it. Nice subtle dig at Jon Bernthal, too!

I do like Rosie but I also think she was jealous of Kelly Ripa. That must have been some type of bad blood there so Rosie sided with the nutty Clay Aiken so she could take a shot at Ripa.

But no one, not a man or especially a woman, wants an adult man they just met putting a hand over their mouth on national TV. We know Rosie would have never tolerated such behavior.

It's just weird, intimate behavior that can reasonably be interpreted as a threat by women. Of course, Clay would never have dreamed of pulling such a stunt on a guy as he know he rightfully might get his ass kicked.

Plus, in 2023, Clay would have been Me Too'ed to death if he did such a thing today.

People also forget that Rosie tried to syndicate her own talk/variety show before Oprah took her on. She had to drop the idea because she couldn't get stations and advertisers. The stories about her personality, including the notorious "liars get cancer" scared everyone away but Oprah still took a chance on her and she flopped. And let's not forget Rosie Live where she positioned herself as Ed Sullivan. It was cancelled after one episode.

I was in the audience for one episode of "The Rosie O'Donnell Show". Guests were Andy Dick, Farrah Fawcett, and Steve Winwood. Rosie was absolutely not going to interact with the audience during commercial breaks and definitely no meet and greet at the end of the show. "I just don't do that", is what she told us. She yelled at a few people between the first two segments.

Andy Dick was fucking nuts. This was the day Farrah lost her mind one of the late night shows that night, Steve Winwood was alright. I flirted with John McDaniel a bit. I'd still do him. But Rosie? The nice was turned WAY down when the cameras were off. Not Ellen mean by any imagination, but definitely not what you see in the public life. I did manage to get the warm up guy to give her a gift I had brought and she sent me a thank you note. I prefer to think of her as a nice person that sends thank you notes.

^is John McDaniel the super queeny music guy that always went to a Broadway show the day before?

R109 Yes. He has great eyes.

I have heard that Carson and Letterman did the same thing, R108-- the second the cameras stopped rolling they dropped the mask. In a way it sort of makes sense in that they want to conserve their energy but it must have looked weird to people in the audience.

R110 Eww. He was so fem.

R111, that might be why they do it. I wonder what the other talk show hosts are like when the cameras aren't rolling. Especially the ones with jolly personas like Kelly Clarkson, Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore.

The Ellen hate that erupted several years ago was a test run to see if paid campaigns could influence public thought. The same person who started and ran it also worked on the Anti Amber hate campaign. It was a mixture of bots right leaning media and was then pushed onto gossip sites. Both Russian an Chinese were employed to run water Campaigns. It's a term used in China for hired online trolls. Both women are LGBT. My friend studies and is employed in monitoring this field. The Anti trans is another one. Angelina Jolie had a campaign start against her but it was pulled for some reason. She is also LGBT. What was successful was getting mainstream seemingly pro LGBT sites biting the bait like Dlisted. It was seen as a successful campaign.

But Ellen really is a nuclear cunt r114.

Ooh Papa Tooney, we got a looney!

Well at least they tried to make Rosie a movie star. She was in A League Of Their Own, The Flintstones, and that one where she's in leather and there's that guy with a really hot ass from Strictly Ballroom.

Ellen had that really weird dark comedy with Bill Pullman, Mr Wrong, trying to promote her a straight.

The Ellen thing struck me as a mix of organic and inorganic content. Someone would post on social media that he or she worked on Ellen's show and recount unflattering accounts of her alleged behavior behind the scenes, then news sites who harvest their content from social media (the D*ily M*il is a chronic offender in this regard) would pick it up and run with it, which gave those posts an aura of authenticity. Whatever the truth of the matter may be I tend to lean towards R115's view, especially in light of what Rosie says about Ellen.

I hung up with Rosie's brother at bear events about a decade ago and he was pleasant. And he was a government official at the time.

^^ I hung out with him too

R118, I think Ellen also fell victim to the anti-white women trend that started a few years ago. Suddenly, there were tons of stories of random white women behaving poorly that were generalized to all white women.

Then it really grew during the BLM movement and the emergence of the "Karen" stereotype.

People and the media didn't turn on Ellen all of a sudden, because she's a lesbian. People were over her after seeing her with GWB at some sports game, seeing her as some elitist hanging out with war criminals too powerful to be charged. She tried to counter that with her "Relatable" stand-up special, but the public preferred to pay attention to the growing numbers of reports about the behind the scene's drama of her show where members of staff were bullied and mistreated by higher ups, while Ellen claims to have known nothing about that. The "be kind to each other" host got perceived as a total fake.

Ro is such a bulldyke. You just know that her pussy stinks!

I can understand Ro, Carson, Letterman "turning down the nice" during show tapings.

They have to move from segment to segment to segment in a quick and orderly fashion otherwise the whole thing collapses. Aldo they need to "save it" in a sense.

It's like with Robin Williams... When he was filming a drama (One Hour Photo, Insomnia) he was very animated and bubbly between takes but when filming his comedies, co-stars said he was very quiet and reserved.

Being "on", giving a performance (while being filmed or on stage) is highly stressful. It's like working out or, well, work. You need to take breaks. When you have to put on a smile all day at your job, you ache for moments you can relax your muscles and stop smiling. That sort of thing.

r125, what you wrote is so correct and its why I never will understand why people say the Royals don't work, they just cut a few ribbons during the week.

That's not what I see. If anybody believes that being a UK Royal isn't emotional, mental and physical labor, guess again.

[quote] Same here. She was HUGE in the 90s, movies, her own talk show, always in the media. And then she just shit all over everything and threw it away.

It is simply beyond comprehension.

Yeah with Ellen it was not only associating with GWB, and giving Kevin Hart a platform to apologize, but vigorously defending her decisions to do so, With Kevin, it was particularly awful, like she was trying to shame the gay community for being outraged over his comments.

I have a love-hate relationship with her, but two of my favorite Rosie stories:

In college, in a theatre class, one of the professors remarked on her acting style, "the part of Rhoda Morganstern has already been cast."

When she picked up her son at school once without TV hair and make-up, one of the other children said to her, "I thought Parker's mommy was Rosie O'Donald" (not a typo). Rosie responded, "I am." The child replied to her, "no you're not!"

R124, Letterman often didn't even turn on the "nice" during the show. At least he was consistent.

[quote]She walked away from it because it was detrimental to her mental health.

It was the exact opposite: Her mental health was detrimental to her career. She said that she couldn't control herself after Columbine and 9/11, which is bizarre since she had no real connection to either, but that's the mind of a narcissist, I guess. Even Oprah made her do a mental health evaluation before she would sign her for the OWN talk show.

She makes it sound like she walked away for altruistic reasons, but the truth is that she lost her mind and wasn't a bankable talent anymore. With her money, she had access to the best mental health professionals in the country, but her ego wouldn't let her admit that she was actually the problem. You see the same pattern with Kanye. She has no self-control. By all accounts, Johnny Carson was the biggest asshole in Hollywood, but he was professional and had self-control.

Rosie has fought with everyone she's worked with. She's terrorized the staff and crew, they've all hated her. She's obviously the problem.

Everybody was devastated by Columbine and 9/11 but we still had to get out there and do our jobs.

Here is why she left the show.

Yellow is the color you get when your liver is fucked up.

We've all known angry, belligerent, bullying dykes like Rosie. You can spot them from a mile away.

This might explain the anger.

....

When she did the OWN show she clashed with her bandleader because she didn’t know a lot about Broadway showtimes. I think they had to bring in another bandleader.

I don’t think Boy George and her got along well either during Taboo.

Katreese Barnes, RIP..

R41 I like Rosie much more than Oprah but you are really reaching. Rosie has never been more influential amongst the general public than Oprah. No sir. I think the nature of these threads makes people come in and reimagine history. It is true she have gotten higher ratings a year or 2 but hell so did Springer. Oprah created something called the e Book Club and it’s selections would top Ny Times best seller and often be made into a Hollywood movie.

Rosie's talk show was frau fare, 100%. She had just adopted her kids and could not stop talking about them. Could not stop asking other celebrities about ... their kids. Then, she has a nervous breakdown over Columbine because she's a *MOM*.

Plus, in those days, she was still in the closet and pretending to be attracted to Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

As insufferable as Oprah was, at least she didn't talk about being a mom and kids all the time.

"Twenty-five years ago, Madonna was at Wembley Stadium [in London], and I was there with her. It was a real wake-up call to why so many rock stars have so much trouble staying in the real world."

Can anyone elaborate on what Rosie meant by this? And was she throwing a little shade at Madonna here?

I think it was more like 30 years ago and it was for The Girlie Show which kicked off at Wembley that fall of '93.

R142, I'm guessing that the crowd went wild for Madonna. That Madonna was being treated like a queen. Everybody was kowtowing to Madonna. Nobody was telling Madonna "No."

That's not the real world for 99% of people who walk the planet. Most of us get treated like shit from time to time.

If you read between the lines, I guess Rosie is saying that Madonna is now delusional, which would be true.

Is it true that she had a feud with John McDaniel?

Jon Bernthal being annoyed at playing a gigolo in American Gigolo gave me my first laugh of the day.

Has Rosie ever played someone's mother?

R147 yes cunt. Have you never seen the live action Flinstones.

She did play a mother in SMILF.

[quote] In her interview with Stern, O’Donnell went into great detail about SMILF‘s demise in late 2018 – early 2019. [bold]The star, who played Shaw’s mother Tutu, [/bold] revealed that the controversy was particularly “confusing” to her, as she “never saw one problem, never heard one complaint” during her two seasons on the set.

Thanks, R149!

What does Rosie’s snatch look like? Any pics????

Rosie played the mother of Jack's sperm donor kid in Will and Grace.

Rosie aged better than I expected

Who will be brave enough to tell Rosie those Percy Dovetonsil eyeglasses aren't doing anything for her?

She was very good in SMILF.

I loved that series. A shame the creator/leading actress turned out to be an asshole on set and caused its and her cancellation.

Rosie's been very serious for a long time now but I'd like to see her in a full out comedy. She should go back to her roots and try to make us laugh again. Does anyone remember her star turn and Stand By Your Man?