Rosie O’Donnell on Ellen, Madonna, Trump and 40 Years in the Queer Spotlight
Stand-up comic. Talk show innovator. The View firebrand. Betty Rubble. There’s very little Rosie O’Donnell, 61, has left to accomplish in her singular career. From the moment she broke out of Long Island with a performance on Star Search in 1984, O’Donnell has proved a highly resilient, sometimes confrontational and always entertaining force. She’s also among the most fiercely outspoken advocates of LGBTQ+ causes in Hollywood. (She launched her own gay family cruise line, for heaven’s sake.) Then, as the country’s far right kicks up its attacks on queer people and their art forms, who better than O’Donnell, the original Donald Trump adversary and Broadway’s biggest cheerleader, to celebrate in The Hollywood Reporter‘s 2023 tribute to Pride?
THR sat down with the actor (American Gigolo, SMILF) and podcaster (iHeart’s Onward With Rosie O’Donnell) at a seaside restaurant near her home in Malibu — she moved to the West Coast in 2021 — for a freewheeling conversation about her wild, rainbow-colored ride to queer iconoclasm.
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I may have some terrible news to break for you.
Tina Turner died?
Oh, you already heard.
Yeah, my old assistant told me seven minutes ago.
Was Tina ever on your show?
A bunch of times. She was a pretty phenomenal woman. She was so strong and able to survive so much and then put it out there so that other people can learn from it. Feels weird when you see people dying that you grew up with.
And you want to enjoy them while they’re here. Which is why I bought tickets to the Madonna tour.
She’s ready. There’s no one better in live performance than her. Twenty-five years ago, she 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.
To her credit, Madonna has said she never wanted to be a Michael Jackson. No matter how big she got, she was always going to be on the street, interacting with the world.
That’s who she is. She’s an artist who draws inspiration from the real world, real relationships, real friendships, injustice.
And she’s also been a really good friend to you.
For 30-something years. I didn’t have any idea that I would be meeting her. I was in baseball rehearsals for A League of Their Own. And Penny Marshall called me into the office and said (Penny Marshall voice), “Madonna’s going to come to audition. If she likes you, and she likes me, maybe she’ll do the movie. Don’t be nervous.” I’m like, “Don’t be nervous? What do you say to her? How do you connect to her?” I told Madonna my mom died when I was 10, and I’m named after my mom, and so on her gravestone is my name as well. We formed a sister thing in a real way where we stay in each other’s lives and touch base. She sends gifts to my kids on their birthdays, and my kids show all their friends: “This is a gift card from Madonna!”
I recall, I believe on Oprah, her saying she was on some remote island when she heard about Donald Trump’s media campaign against you (after O’Donnell criticized him on The View in 2006, saying, among other things, “This guy annoys me on a multitude of levels.”) And Madonna called you to check in. Do you remember that?
Yes, I do. Vividly. She said, “What’s going on?” And I told her what happened and what went down. She said, “OK. I just want to know because people are asking me.” I’m like, “Here’s what it is.” And I told her the whole thing, and she said, “Got it.” And then when she was asked, she said, “I firmly support Rosie,” which came at a very needed time.
The entire chapter was ugly. His language was ugly. And the media was airing it. He was spewing it on Entertainment Tonight.
[David] Letterman had him on and was laughing, and all the political shows had him on. He was even on sports shows talking about it. And it was not just an attack on me but on all women he doesn’t deem worthy, whether they’re in his mind not pretty enough, too tough, not feminine enough, not straight enough, not beautiful enough. Growing up as a feminist with Gloria Steinem and Our Bodies, Ourselves and all of those kinds of influences in my life, I thought that some organization, like the National Organization for Women, would say, “No, no, hold it, step back.” But no one really did except for my friends.
I think he formulated a lot of his attack strategies out of that.
Yes, a hundred percent. And he never turns away from any kind of public feud or spat or his opinion on women. That’s what made me stand up against him. There was this young girl, Tara Conner, who was the Miss Teen USA at his pageant. She had gone to a club in Greenwich Village and kissed a girl. It was splashed on the cover of the New York Post. He held a big press conference right before we went live that day to say that he was going to “give her another chance” and that he “believes in chances,” as if he were the pimp and she was the prostitute who had acted out. It infuriated me in every way. I said, “This man’s a piece of crap. Here’s the proof.”
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.
Yet certain people I would consider LGBTQ+ allies went on the show — like Joan Rivers, Cyndi Lauper …
Cyndi called me from there and said (Cyndi Lauper voice), “Hey, Rosie, I’m doing a show with Donald Trump, and I want you to know that we need to make the most money at this event. Would you donate?” I said, “Cyn, I know you don’t listen to the news …” She’s not exactly dialed in.
It seems like you’re often at odds.
With?
Whomever, whether it be Elisabeth Hasselbeck or — what was your relationship like with Barbara Walters?
I knew her very well from Cindi Berger, who’s my publicist and who [was] also her publicist. Cindi would have to go out to dinner and to a show with Barbara and I would tag along. So I knew her before I ever did The View.
Then Barbara and I got in a huge fight, and it was about the Donald Trump thing. He published an open letter to me in the Post. In it, he wrote that she’d called him “to apologize for my behavior.” I was like, “Whoa.” We got into an argument in the makeup room that day. I said, “I can’t believe that I haven’t heard from you during all of this time but that you’ve been communicating with him. Do you consider him your real friend, Barbara? I thought we had something real and something different than the way you’ve been treating me.”
It got loud, and people were in shock because nobody talked to her like that. I said something about her daughter, which I shouldn’t have said. She was hurt. And we were live in 20 minutes. Sometimes I go back and find that episode and I watch it, and I can see how tense it was. But I have apologized to her many times, and we got past it and saw each other [before her death in 2022].
What did you say about her daughter?
Well, nothing horrible, just that’s not the kind of relationship I have with my kid. “I don’t know what kind of relationship you have with your kid.” I definitely think that I have a kind of mother thing for older women. Not in a romantic way, but in a maternal guidance way. When I feel hurt by them, it feels much larger in the moment.
And that’s what she was to you?
She was one of the archetypal women that I grew up to and wanted to be around, especially after the death of my mom. Barbra Streisand was the main one. Bette Midler was another. But there were very successful people like Betty Friedan. I was reading Betty Friedan when I was a kid, and I was very interested in successful women and had a real love for them.
So, this is The Hollywood Reporter’s Pride package, and I wanted to honor an icon. Do you even predate Ellen DeGeneres, or were you guys neck and neck? I’m trying to remember.
In terms of coming out? Well, she came out first on my show, remember? She came on and my show was live.
The Lebanese cuisine/baba ghanoush routine …
Correct. I had said to her, “I don’t want you to be out there alone,” because the reason she was doing publicity was “The Puppy Episode,” this big surprise episode of her sitcom. And it had been rumored that’s what she was doing, coming out, but nobody really knew. I had known her for years doing stand-up and as young entertainers in Hollywood. Me, Melissa, k.d. and Ellen, we all would go to parties together.
Melissa … k.d. …
Etheridge and k.d. lang.
Oh, right, of course. I was thinking comedians, not lesbians.
It was all different kinds of gay people. Celebrity lesbians.
What was that like?
It was great. We were all so young. Nobody had really made it yet. I think probably k.d. had made it more than anyone else.
Were you guys dating each other?
I never dated anybody in that group, no.
So with Ellen, as the two rising comics in the scene, what was your dynamic like?
It was a good relationship. We were friends. We supported each other. Which is why when she came on my show, I said, “Let me not have you standing there by yourself. Let’s get a joke in there.” And we sat down and came up with that, “Oh my God, I love Casey Kasem. Maybe I’m Lebanese.” It became a big thing.
Then the episode aired, Time ran its “Yep, I’m Gay” cover and everybody was asking me, “What do you think about Ellen?” It became a strange, “There can’t be two lesbians in this town,” kind of a thing. Then we each had success and went separate ways.
She texted me a few weeks ago checking in, seeing how I’m doing, and I asked her how she’s surviving not being on TV. It’s a big transition. But we’ve had our weirdness in our relationship. I don’t know if it’s jealousy, competition or the fact that she said a mean thing about me once that really hurt my feelings.
Which was?
She said it on Larry King Live. Larry King said, “Whatever happened to Rosie O’Donnell’s show? She went down the tubes as soon as she came out.” And the quote that Ellen said was, “I don’t know Rosie. We’re not friends.” I was watching TV in bed with my wife going, “Did she just say that?”
Well, a lot of has been said about her in the press since then. Did any of that surprise you?
It would never occur to me to say “I don’t know her” about somebody whose babies I held when they were born. It wouldn’t be in my lexicon of choices to ever say. When she was in a perplexing situation and people were saying things about her, I said, “Let me stand next to you and say that I’m Lebanese, too.” When it was a downward media time for me, she didn’t do anything.
So what did she text you recently?
She wrote, “I’m really sorry and I don’t remember that.” I guess she saw me talk about it on Andy Cohen’s show. I remembered it so well, I had T-shirts printed and I gave them to my staff that said “I don’t know Rosie. We’re not friends.” I have a picture of her holding [my then-infant son] Parker. I know her mother. I could identify her brother without her in the room. I knew her for so many years. It just felt like I don’t trust this person to be in my world.
Did you ever do her show?
She used the same staff from my show — Jim Paratore, Andy Lassner. So that was odd. It was very similar to my show. And then I asked to go on because of something I was promoting, and she said no. And I remember going, “Seriously?” After she said no that one time, whenever they would ask [me to appear] on the show, I would say no.
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.
After Columbine, you had that face-off with Tom Selleck. Looking back, would you have handled it differently?
No, because there was a full-page ad in all the magazines that said, “Shooting teaches young people good things.” That was the quote, and a full-page picture of Tom Selleck, and then, “I’m the NRA.” He had a movie coming out, and I said to the producers, “Tell his publicist the first segment’s going to be about the movie, but the second one’s going to be about the NRA.” Now, no one had seen me attack someone on the show before or be aggressive or confrontational.
You were the “Queen of Nice.”
Correct. I don’t think his people were prepared for what happens when I get angry. First of all, I get hyperverbal and I use a lot of syllables. I don’t even know where it comes from. I said, “Can’t we just agree on one thing? Assault weapons.” And then he got very angry. I remember walking off the set that day and going to the dressing room and there were a bunch of people in there and I thought, “That was OK, right?”
I don’t think you get enough credit for turning The View into what it’s become, which is all these political debates.
I was definitely the one who did it, yes, because [The View co-creator] Bill Geddie really did not enjoy my political views. But we would be on and there would be some major news story of a bombing in Iraq or a platoon killed, and they would want you to do the new lipstick shades for segment six. And I would say to him — and we didn’t get along at all — but I would say to him, “Do you think that women are so dumb that all they want to talk about is thinner thighs in 30 days? Or what’s on sale?” The show needed to change because it was a show created by a woman with hosts who were women, run by men. And it didn’t work.
It reminds me of Mad Men.
Which I’ve never seen. Have you seen the new Menendez documentary [Peacock’s Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed] about the Menudo guy?
No. But I did watch American Gigolo, and while I didn’t love it, I loved you in it.
Thank you. I didn’t love it either, and I questioned at first why you would take a movie set in the mores of the early ’80s and try to remake it without having the seismic cultural shifts that have occurred since then incorporated. One review wrote, “It’s almost as though Rosie’s in a different show,” and in a way, it was. Jon Bernthal was not happy with the show, and it was very clear [editor’s note: Bernthal couldn’t be reached for comment]. It’s difficult to work that way on a set. He was never happy that he was playing a gigolo. And I’m like, “Well, it’s called American Gigolo.”
Maybe he didn’t think it would be as gigolo-y as it was because they really put him to work.
Listen, it was heavy on the gigolo.
Let’s talk about the gay family cruise line you started. These were wonderful trips for same-sex couples and their families. I wonder how Republicans would twist that in 2023? I’m looking at what’s going on in this country, and it feels like déjà vu. It feels worse.
Worse.
I don’t remember them going after drag queens before.
Ever. I mean, the fact that that’s happening and there are celebrities who live there who aren’t spending every waking moment on TikTok, denouncing [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis, I don’t get it.
Didn’t you have a foster child whom Florida took from you?
Yes, we had two. The boy ended up having to go to a special needs foster home. And the girl stayed with us for three years. After three years, we tried to adopt her, and there was a law [overturned in 2010] that prevented gay people from adopting even the foster children they raised.
There are half a million kids in foster care. There were so many gay people wanting to be parents. So I sued with the ACLU. I was in support of that lawsuit with it and did all the publicity for it. And it inspired me to do the gay cruises. So we did it. We got together and I rented a boat. It was a lot of money and it was a big risk, but when people were showing up that first day, it was an overwhelming confirmation that you were not alone in this world and that we are masses of people.
You now live in Malibu.
I have a daughter with autism [Dakota, age 10]. I once asked an expert, “If I could choose any school in the world and the destination is not a problem, where should I send her?” And she said, “Park Century [School] in Culver City.” When I got Gigolo, they told me it’s being shot in Culver City. And we got her in. When she started third grade, she couldn’t read. In one year, she was reading Harry Potter. It’s changed her whole life — her sense of herself, her sense of confidence, her ability to know that she’s smart, that she’s funny.
You’re parenting alone?
Yes, I’m a single mother. I adopted her with a woman named Michelle who had cancer and got addicted to meds and then took her own life. Not when we were still together — she left before Dakota was 2 — but still a tragedy.
How do you feel you’ve scored in the love category of your life?
I wish I had been able to have a relationship that lasted forever, but I think I didn’t have the capability for a lot of reasons. I’ve seen longevity in other people’s relationships, and it’s always been something that I admired. Relationships are hard; I would never get married again. I kind of like being a single parent. I like being able to make the decisions for her and not have to negotiate with someone else about what they think is right. Co-parenting is hard. Mind you, I have help and I’m a wealthy person, so this has to be filtered through that lens.
I’ll leave you with something a little left-field but definitely queer-coded. Is it true you passed on Hocus Pocus?
I was offered the Kathy Najimy part.
And you turned it down?
Yes. Because I didn’t want to play the fat, mean witch who eats and kills kids. Even though it was Bette Midler, who was like, my favorite, and Sarah Jessica Parker.
It was Bette Midler!
I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do a part where I would be mean to kids and the joke was about the size. I just felt like I had to say no for that.
Do you regret it?
No. And I think Kathy’s fantastic in it. You know, she does that face. I don’t even know how she does it.
Interview edited for length and clarity.
This story first appeared in the June 14 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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