April 18, 2023 • 34 mins
Actor, comedian, and podcaster Rosie O’Donnell joins Brooke for a wide-ranging conversation about having a family member who suffers from addiction, the ways they learned to practice tough love, and what it’s like to come into your own in the public eye. Rosie opens up about her early stand-up career (including stealing Jerry Seinfeld’s jokes!), her controversial turn as a co-host on The View, and why producers of a cult-classic film pushed her to hide her sexuality.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
What do you do when life doesn't go according to
plan that moment you lose a job, or a loved one,
or even a piece of yourself. I'm Brookshields and this
is now What, a podcast about pivotal moments as told
by people who lived them. Each week, I sit down
with a guest to talk about the times they were
knocked off course and what they did to move forward.
(00:27):
Some stories are funny, others are gut wrenching, but all
are unapologetically human and remind us that every success and
every setback is accompanied by a choice, and that choice
answers one question, now.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
What.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
How did you develop your comedy? How did you develop
a set?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
I did the open mic night and I told stories
about my family because at the beginning I did Jerry
Seinfeld jokes seriously like I had seen him on MERV Griffin.
And I went to the comedy club and I did
as many as I could, not only with his jokes
that he had written, which I didn't realize you had
to write your own jokes, because I thought streisand doesn't
write her own songs. Why do I have to write
(01:15):
my own jokes? So I got up on stage and
I went you know sometimes your carstals, you open up
the hood. What are you looking for? A big on off,
switch on off. I not only took his jokes, I
took his cadence. I took everything.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
And to ever tell him that he knows.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Because the other comics came over to me and said,
where'd you get those jokes, Rosie? And I said, uh,
Johnny Seinman, he was on MERV Griffin yesterday. They said
you can't do that. I said, I certainly can. He
didn't write those jokes. They go, yes, he did. And
I was like, I'm fucked if I have to write
my own jokes. So the other comics said to me,
try just telling stories about your family. The jokes will come.
(01:55):
And that's what I did.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
My guess today is the incredible Rosie o'donnal. Rosie is
an Emmy Award winning talk show host, comedian, actor, podcaster,
and most importantly, a wonderful friend and mother. We met
years ago, and I've loved watching her transformation from a
stand up comic to a fixture in pop culture, an
important and occasionally controversial social and political commentator, and an
(02:25):
activist whose work with marginalized communities is too extensive to list.
Here Rosie is honest, vulnerable, and committed to personal growth.
As always. I was just blown away by her candor
and her willingness to share so much of herself with
all of us. So here is Rosie O'Donnell, Rosie O'donnald,
(02:54):
Welcome to now What. I'm so excited a that you've
asked me to do your podcast, and I'm very very
happy about that, so thank you.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
It was my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
We've kind of warmed up a little bit, So thank
you so much for joining my podcast, which is called.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Now What Now What? What a great title.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
It is a great title, much like yours. Onward. What
made you decide you wanted to do a podcast?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Truthfully, it was doing a series, an hour long drama
series last year that took so much time and energy
and ended up being sort of disappointing artistically, and you know,
they fired the show runner in between, and the lead
mail didn't have a great time, wasn't happy about, you know,
being in it, and it just was I thought of
(03:39):
all this time that I'm out of my house with
my little ten year old daughter. It was too much time.
It wasn't worth not being a round her. So I
really did think after that show finished, what can I
do to stay home and still be creatively inspired? And
I had been asked to do a podcast years ago,
and I tried, and guess what, I had no idea
(04:00):
how to do it. I would sit there by myself
and I would try to just talk, like and it
was like, this is not going to work.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
And you didn't interview people. You weren't interviewing people. You
were just talking.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
I was talking. Yeah, that shows you a stupid way
to do a podcast. I didn't have anyone to interview.
I didn't have subject matters, I didn't have experts was
but I never I never aired it. I recorded them
and then I listened back to them and said, yeah,
I don't want this deal. I'm sorry, I can't do it.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
You call this just a start of a third and
big chapter, and I just love that.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah, third and final chapter. Truthfully, we have one to thirty,
and then we got thirty to sixty, and then we
got sixty on and how long you go on is
anyone's guess. But this is the third and final chapter
of a three chapter book. I like that.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
I don't know if I'm comfortable yet saying final chapter
because I feel like there's going to be a few
pivots in this chapter or that this.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yeah, they can be a lot of three many chapters, yes,
many chapters. Yeah, that's true. There's so many times that
I remember Nora Efron saying to me, you know, I
didn't start directing until I was forty eight, or you
know I didn't start doing you know, Georgia O'Keeffe never
painted until and she would always know people who started
things later than most. And I always hear her voice
(05:22):
in my head whenever I think, oh, I'm too old
for that. No, Grandma Moses learned to paint when she
was a grandma.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
I love that, though. That's as there is such a thing.
I mean, my mom didn't want to be called grandma.
Nobody want to be called grandma. And I just think,
you know, I'm always like, hurry up and have kids kids,
You're like, Mom, that's weird.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
My daughter has three. I'm a grandma now three babies.
She has three babies under the age of four, and
she's pregnant with her fourth.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Wow, one to three for now.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Boom boom boom boom boom.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Oh my godness.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
She's only twenty five and you know, it's uh, she's
had some challenges and you know, she's had a hard
hand dealt to her. I think as a kid, she
was born kind of compromised in some ways, and she struggled,
and we try to support her as best we can
and try to, you know, not let addiction wreak havoc
(06:19):
on the whole family.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Well that's a very very very hard, hard part of
a story. You know. How do you think being parents, though,
has helped her and changed her?
Speaker 2 (06:33):
You know, I'm not so sure that it has yet.
You know, I think that stable footing and some continuity,
and you know, I think that those things, when they
become part of a routine for her and she's able
to care for herself better, will enhance her love or
her ability to parent.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
I mean, that's young to have that many children. My god,
it is yes, has she Have you seen her mature
in some ways?
Speaker 2 (07:03):
You know, I'd like to say yes, but it's a struggle.
And you know, from alcohol addiction from your mother. When
addiction is in the equation, love doesn't matter. You can
love someone to death and want them so much to
be well and take care of themselves. But you know,
(07:25):
I've been going to alan On for a while now
to sort of deal with a lot of the stuff
that comes with it, and it's helped me tremendously. I
don't know if you had access to.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
That ever, not when I was thirteen, when I was
in my twenties, because I was continuing to carry the
belief that I could change the situation, I couldn't get
it quite out of my head. And then when was
took hearing other people's stories and also going to AA too,
(07:58):
because it was important for me to not just be
ACOA or AA or alan On, like I wanted to
know the different pieces that are affected in that type
of a relationship, and it did take a lot of
the onus off of me, which I will always be
thankful for. The hardest part is loving someone yes, and
(08:19):
not being able to fix it for that no, you.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Know, and never ever being able to stop trying. Like
the you know, the one woman said to me, listen,
if your addict is angry at you, you're doing something
right right, And that's a very hard part for me
to do, you know, Like when she has a need
or she'll call and she needs something, it's so hard
(08:43):
for me to stand in and not enable and not
be so upset when she's upset of me, you know.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
But also this idea of tough love. You know, we
never think really to associate the word tough with love,
you know, right? Did you learn that lesson? And through
alan On?
Speaker 2 (09:02):
I did, Actually I did with these wonderful you know,
there's a group that I am in that is mothers
of addicts and it's been so life saving for me.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
And I imagine that losing your mom at such a
young age brings this springs up a lot, because one
thing I always felt with my mother was the minute
she drank, I lost her, you know. And I've I've
had my younger daughter sort of give me that back
to me and saying it's annoying when you drink, mom,
and that put up put a bell and I was
just I can't repeat this. I cannot repeat this. And
(09:38):
it's the thing I'm the most afraid of. To give
listeners just a little bit of a background. Can you
talk a little bit about your childhood, like what you
were like as a little kid and wear it all.
Where the Rosie that we love, where was she as
a little kid?
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Well, we were a very Catholic, Irish Catholic household. My
mom had five children right in a row, so right
now in my family it's sixty three, sixty two, sixty one,
sixty and fifty five.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
So that is the meaning of Irish twins.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
You're not kidding. We had four in a row, and
people would always think my sister and I were twins,
and that my two brothers, my two older brothers, were twins,
but we weren't. We were all single births. And my
mother was member of the parish council at Christ the
King Church and was very connected to the church. And
she also had just started working when she got sick.
(10:33):
She started again because my youngest brother was in kindergarten,
so she started being as secretary at a school. And
then shortly after that she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
And by the time they opened her up, she had
had pain in her back and I remember just like
it was like around October Halloween she started not feeling
(10:54):
well and then she was in the hospital and when
they opened her up, which I only found out later,
everywhere so they just told her to go home.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Did she tell you all of this, any of you
didn't find any of this out until much later.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Yes, She brought us into the hospital one at a time,
my sister and I, and she gave me a little
gift from the people who sell things to people in
the you know those little sign like this. It was
a little emerald fake ring, and she gave that to me,
and she told me to never forget. She never said
I love you. We were not and I love you. Family.
(11:28):
We were very closed off to emotions. You weren't encouraged
to tell your feelings. Did you ever tell her you
loved her?
Speaker 1 (11:37):
No?
Speaker 2 (11:37):
But I did tell my grandmother who lived with us,
who was my mother's mother, who never could cook or
never could drive anywhere or you know, she was just
a home bound woman who my mom took care of.
And when she died, I thought, are they gonna let
her stay here? Like I didn't understand what had happened.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Were you all close your brothers siblings to me?
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Yes, we were. We were. Now there's two sides. There's
three of us on one side and two on the
other side. And it's been like that for years and
it's very sad. But if you don't have parents to say,
knock it off. Your all coming to Thanksgiving and for
one day you're going to get along. We didn't have that.
We didn't have anyone keeping us together as children, and
(12:22):
so now you know, we're estranged. And it's one of
the most painful things that's happened to me in my
adult life. You know, it's to be estranged from, especially
my sister who I was so close to for so long.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
It's such a tremendous loss. I mean, we will get
off loss. It's not. It doesn't. That does not only
define you. You've talked about the loss of your mother
really sort of defining a lot of your life. Yes,
but it feels like there's this theme of loss of
being estranged. How do you How have you found the
(12:58):
strength to process it all and remain hopeful?
Speaker 2 (13:03):
You know what it is. I don't really let people
leave my life, you know. I don't let like Jackie
and Jeanie, my two best friends, are still my best
friends since I was three. When I knocked on her
door when I was three, when we just moved into
Long Island suburbia, I said, do you have anyone here
who's three? And the mother let me in and she did.
(13:25):
Jackie and we are best friends still to this day.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
You were on a campaign, Hey, Do you have anybody
here who's three?
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Yes? Can you imagine letting your three year old child
walk across the street and go up and knock on
the houses that were just being built? Do you have
anyone three? And they did, so it was a big
bonus for me, and I keep people close, you know,
I don't really have much loss outside of the huge
ones like my mother and my sister.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
I feel like your sense of loyalty is just so pure.
I've seen it towards me, I've seen it towards others
over the course of many, many years, and I've seen
you take the high road. I admire your work ethic
and your resilience and feel like comedy is a part
of that. Right right, When did you first realize that
you were funny? Well?
Speaker 2 (14:22):
You know, my mom, I think, suffered with depression. And
when I would come home from school, if there was
Barbara streisand on, I knew it was going to be
a good day. And I would do my Barber streisand
impressions for my mother and for my nana. When my
mom was in a good mood, I would do it.
Isn't this the height and non Chalan? I would do
it all you know in my kitchen. So I knew
I was funny, and I knew that I was going
(14:44):
to be an entertainer from the time I was in kindergarten.
Other kids are bringing in Barbie dolls and I'm like, going,
I'd like to now do a number from the Canter
and Ebb musical like and I would sing for the
And IM not a singer, honey, you know I can
fake it a little bit, but I'm not singer. I'm
not a Broadway singer. Like, let's be realistic.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
You know I'm not either. You're not gonna sing. I'm
not gonna stand up opposite you know, Gheno and low
people away, right, But I do have. And you paved
the way because if it hadn't been for you in
Greece on Broadway, the whole idea of casting someone who
is not traditionally a Broadway star performer was the beginning
(15:26):
of my whole Broadway career.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
And in mine too.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
So you started when did you see your first Broadway show?
Speaker 2 (15:33):
I saw my first Broadway show in nineteen seventy three,
Bette Midler clams on a half show.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Oh god, was that not the best revolutionary?
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Revolutionary and I remember thinking, I want to be that woman.
I wanted to be here now. Streisand was not someone
I ever saw on a stage, So she was only
in movies. She was far away in Hollywood. She lived
in Malibu. I had no knowledge of all this but Broadway,
where I could wait by the stage door and see
a sweaty actor come out that just sang Pippen. I
(16:06):
would be over the moon, over the moon.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
How did you get into stand up?
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Well, when I was in high school, there was a
boy in my grade whose older brother was fifteen years
older than him, and he was a stand up comic,
and he came to see the show where you make
fun of the teachers called Senior Follies. And I had
written the Senior Follies show and I performed in it.
I was Gilda Radner, Rosanna and Rosanna Dana. Right you, Evan,
(16:32):
Notice you got a little spit in your mouth that
goes up and down and up and down. I would
do that. And so this kid says, I'd like you
to meet my brother Richie. And Richie Minovini, who was
a well known comic in the touring circuit, said to me,
I got a comedy club on Huntington and Huntington, will
you come and try I said, I don't want to
(16:53):
be a stand up comic. I want to be on Broadway.
And he's like, well, why don't you just try it?
So I went to this comedy club and I had
all my friends there. It was a Saturday night, and
everybody was, you know, laughing and cracking up. And I
didn't even have jokes. I would say things like Mary
Lynn is dating Billy and Bob doesn't know, and everybody
would laugh because it was true. It was just like
(17:14):
it was like being in the lunch room at my cafeteria.
And so Richie comes up to me and says, why
don't you come back tomorrow. Well tomorrow was a school night, Sunday,
so none of my friends could go. So I went
up and I died a horrible death. I had not
you didn't know you, You didn't know your audience. Now
I didn't know anyone in the crowd. And I was
(17:35):
standing up there going like, you know, here's my impression
of pac Man. Who whoa? That's what I literally. And
I was fifteen, sixteen years old, you know. So he
said keep coming back, and he let me go sit
and watch and I can't believe that my father let me.
But I went every night to these comedy clubs and
I would sit and watch and then Shirley Hemphill do
you remember her from What's Happening? Shirley Hemphill was the
(17:58):
headliner at the Eastside Comedy Club and she came in
a day early when I was doing the hosting for
the open mic night, and she said to Richie Manavini,
she's opening for me this weekend, and he said she's
not ready. She said, she's opening for me or I'm
not going on and you're to pay your fifty bucks
(18:19):
a show. And it was my first paying gig.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
And how old were you?
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Sixteen?
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Wow? So wait, then take me back a little bit.
So then you go to college and then drop out.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Yeah, I go to college and I had a one
six two grade point average at Dickinson College, which was
a D minus because I would not get up at
seven am to take World History. I would you know.
I had writing class I loved, a photography class I loved,
but all the ones that you were required to take,
I like, wouldn't show up. And I remember environmental science
(18:53):
I couldn't understand. And the final was there are three lakes,
and they told you all about the sedimentary stuff under
which lake would be empty after this rainfall. And I
run oh Lake B because there were some terrorists with
camels who were coming in to the country and this
was during the Iran Contra thing, you know, and they
(19:15):
stopped at this lake and the camels drank. And I
wrote this elaborate story, and she, this woman, professor Betty Barnes,
called me into her office and she said, now, miss O'Donnell,
I don't know if I'm going to be able to
pass you with this, but this is the funniest thing
I've ever read. I think you should go into comedy.
I'm gonna give you the D minus. And she gave
(19:35):
me a D minus instead of failing me. Was so
nice of her. Then I quit that college and I
went to Boston University, a conservatory where you had to audition,
and I auditioned, and I went there to be an actress.
And during the night I would go to the comedy
clubs and do open mic night. And one night they
(19:56):
said to me, so and so has passed out drunk.
Will you go with Dennis Leary, who was unknown to
this club in the suburbs of Boston and will you
do thirty minutes? And I said sure, Now Brook, I
had never done thirty minutes, but it was sixty dollars
for one show. And I went with Dennis Leary and
(20:17):
two other Boston comedians and I got up there. I
did about six minutes and then I said good night,
and then I'm sure I closed with whoa, whoa, whoa,
you know, because it was such a great pac Man Joe.
And on the way home, Dennis Leary said, listen, if
you say you can do thirty, you better have at
least twenty. And I said, well, thank you, I'm going
to try to get twenty. And then I dropped out
(20:39):
and I started getting gigs, and eventually there was a
woman in the club east Side Comedy Club that my
friend's older brother owned, and she came over to me
and said, Hi, I'm Ed McMahon's daughter. And I said,
you're not Ed McMahon's daughter. You're in the middle of
a long island. What are you doing? And well, my
dad has me as a producer of Star Search. I'm
(21:00):
here looking for talent. We'd like to book you on
Star Search. I was like, are you kidding me. She
gave me your card. The next day, Star Search called
me and I was on my way out to Los
Angeles and I won five episodes, and you got like
twenty seven hundred dollars each time you won. I was
richer than I had ever been. I ran out of
(21:20):
material on the fifth or sixth episode. I called my
comic friends at home and said, what jokes of yours
can I use? And they told me what I could do.
But I lost that six week and that was the
beginning of my career. And as a result of doing
Star Search, I got booked all over the country and
I started touring when I was like twenty two.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
I'd love to pivot to when you were on your
show The ROSI O'donnalds show and it ran for six years,
six yes seasons. What do you remember most from that
experience in that time?
Speaker 2 (22:01):
The love, truthfully, the love of the cast and then
the crew, The love of all those producers that helped
me do it. The love of the people I grew
up watching and loving, you know. I mean, I remember
Mary Tyler Moore came on the show and I went
into her dressing room and introduced myself and showed her
the notebook that I had kept since her show was on,
(22:23):
with trivia questions written in childish scrawl, and she was like,
is this real? I was like, it certainly, is so
getting to me.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
As if you would have made it up, Like the
night before, I'm gonna I'm going to write in a book,
I'm going to pretend.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
To Mary Tyler Moore exactly. All I wanted to do
was get that Mary Richard. But you know, I loved
doing it. I loved every minute of it. Now, there
were things that became too much. It became too big
too soon. It became an overwhelming thing to be shot
out of a cannon into the stratosphere and then say,
(22:59):
you know you got to stay up there. I'm like, no, no, no,
I don't. I'm only doing this until my kid goes
to kindergarten. Then I'm quitting.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
And then you're dubbed Queen of Nice.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Which was never accurate. You know, I it wasn't a
horrible thing to be called, but I didn't think it
was accurate. I don't think anyone who ever saw my
stand up in my heyday would think that I was nice.
I went after Woody Allen and I went after you know, sexism,
and I went after you know, I cursed. I was
you know, I was definitely not the Queen of nice
in terms of my stand up.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Isn't it interesting how it was kind of like a
negative I mean, you know that you take something like
that and in that context, and in Hollywood it's almost
it's it is an insult in many ways.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Well, at the time, people were being killed. On the
Jenny Jones Show, they had a person who was, you know,
upset that the person had a crush on him and
ended up murdering one of the former guests. You know,
Heralda was getting punched in the face every day. So
according to the standards of daytime at the time, with
the exclusion of Oprah, I was the Queen of nice
(24:05):
only because nobody was getting bloodied on my show.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
You know, can you talk to me about your decision
to leave the show.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Yeah. When I took the show, the Rose O'donnald Show,
I told them that I only wanted to go until
my son was in kindergarten. Well, I ended up going
until he was in first grade, and when the show
was a big hit in year two, they said we
want to extend your contract. I said, okay, I had
signed a four year deal. I said, I'll give you
two more years. That was six years now. The whole
staff knew this from the beginning. I told everyone, no,
(24:35):
I'm going to leave after that year. And everybody was like,
h you'll never leave. You're not going to walk away
from that money. You would never do it. And I
left and people were shocked. Howard Stern asked me a lot.
Don't you wish you'd just stayed on a few more
years and got a few more hundred millions? And my
point was this, if you ever have one hundred million
dollars and you think you need more, you have missed
(24:57):
the meaning of life. So I had more money than
a human should have, and I said, I'm done.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
I mean, that's a huge decision to make. And I
know that we've talked about a lot of your pivotal experiences,
but if you look back at your life, is there
a moment where you thought, oh shit, now what do
I do? You know? It's not this podcast?
Speaker 2 (25:19):
No, no, honey, not at all. I think that after
the Tom Selleck interview, where the first time I actually
confronted someone about their political beliefs about guns, and he
was the head of the NRA spokesperson at that point.
He was not the head, he was the spokesperson for
the NRA, and Columbine had just happened, and he was
(25:40):
on a few weeks after that. And after I did that,
and then the NRA started sending, you know, a lot
of mail, not all of it happy, And I thought,
at that point.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
What did I do?
Speaker 2 (25:53):
What did I step in?
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Was this when you were hosting your show? This was
when you were hosting your show, right.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Okay, yeah, Columbine was ninety nine.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
How did you move through it?
Speaker 2 (26:03):
You know? I moved through it by realizing that what
I had to say was important and that women aren't
just going to sit back and shut up as they're
killing our children in schools. And as a mother, I
was a young mother, I was very broken by Columbine.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Well, I mean, it was a devastating, It was just
devastating in every way. But there was also a shift.
And then for you personally, you go to the view
and you get to have opinions.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Yes, what was that? Like? Wow?
Speaker 1 (26:36):
It was you know what.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
I grew up playing sports. I'm a very big tomboy.
I played baseball. I played basketball, was on every team.
I was the captain. You know. I was very into
supporting other women. Title nine. Passed the ball, you get,
the layup, you pass, you run. You know. It was
team work. That's where I was going in. So I
went in there with a team work attitude. But you know,
Elizabeth Hasselbeck was on there and was the producer of
(27:01):
an all woman's talk show with supposally a woman's voice.
Was a man, an old sis white man, Republican who
was against everything that I believed in and stood for.
And he loved Elizabeth Hasselbeck and would go into her
little dressing room and give her notes and talking points
of the Republican press that they would release daily. She
(27:21):
had the talking points, and you know, I was trying
to get her to feel more than to fact. I'm like,
but what do you feel about this?
Speaker 1 (27:29):
You know?
Speaker 2 (27:29):
And I tried. Here's what I did. When I took
the job. I said to myself, I'm gonna love her
no matter what. I took her to a first Broadway show.
I took her kids to see the Nickelodeon shows with
me and my kids. I had her to my house
with her husband. They swam in my pool. I thought
we were friends in a civil kind of way, and
then one day on the show, she kind of threw
(27:51):
me under the bus and I was like, are you
fucking kidding me? And I finished the show, got my coat,
walked out and said I Am not going back. And
I didn't until a few of the years later when
they asked me to come back, and Whoopy was on it,
and you know it, we clashed in ways that I
was shocked by.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
That takes balls, all of it. I have to say,
do you think that they you were made to be
the villain in all of that?
Speaker 2 (28:18):
In some ways I was, but it was all right.
You know, I think I had produced my own show.
I was the solo boss, and here I was not
having any power to make decisions. There would be you know,
the Rory Kennedy documentary about Abu Grabe was out about
the torture that we did as a country, how we
(28:38):
sanctioned it. And Bill Getty wanted to do the new
Fall lipstick colors and I'm like, we're not going to talk.
And then you know, Bill Cosby was a big topic,
and I wanted to discuss Bill Cosby and Whoopee did not.
Do you regret doing that show? No, I don't have
any regrets in terms of like career and show business
like that. I feel like each thing I learned something.
(28:59):
But I know this is not the best use of
my talent to get in a show where I have
to argue and defend you know, basic principles of humanity
and kindness. I don't know it was. It was not
something that I would ever do again, you know. And
when she died, Barbara and I, you know, got along
after we went out to dinner. We knew each other
(29:21):
way before I did that show, before she asked me
to do it, and we remained you know, friendly towards
the end. And you know, I forgave her because she
was older and she did the best that she could
with you know, what she had to work with. But
it's nothing I'd want to do again. I could say that.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yes, Something that strikes me about your career is that
throughout it, there have been women who've lifted you up. Yes,
in your comedy and your shows.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
Well, and you know what's interesting, you know it's interesting too, Brooke,
is that all of my movies were directed by women. Well,
like I did League of the Row was Penny. She
picked me out of being a VJ and gave me that.
And then Sleepless in Seattle was Nora Ephron. She not
only helped my career, she got me an apartment in
her apartment building, the Apthorpe, and I lived there for
(30:13):
the whole time I had Parker as a baby and
was doing my talk show. And there have been women
who have taken me in and nurtured me in a
way that I wish all women did with each other.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
I mean, there is something very I'm sure your mom
can see this and can see that you didn't lose faith,
and that you weren't alone, and that there were women
that came to your rescue. I'm just getting a note
today my producer, Julia, wants to know if you'd ever
do a Now and Then sequel.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
I would love that. I would love to do it
Now and then Sequel. You know what's funny about the
movie Now and Then. My character was gay, she was
a lesbian. And in the film, I'm very close to
Rita Wilson's character and I'm a gynecologist and I'm delivering
her baby. And then I look up up from catching
the baby and I say to her, I love you,
(31:02):
you know, just friends like you know, not as a lover.
And when they showed the film, the producer said, let's
take out that she's gay, and they took every little
tiny thing that I had done to build the character
into an accurate gay woman and made her straight.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
God did that just piss you off?
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Well? I was like, this can't be really happening. Is
this really happening? But you know, this was before Will
and Grace, This was before Ellen was out, This was
before you know, and it was very controversial to be gay,
and it was contraver. My agent didn't know if I
should take the job because what if people find out
that you are gay? And I was like, come on,
I'm an actress.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
When did you come when did you come out?
Speaker 2 (31:44):
After I I had two foster children and one of
them we had for many years and I tried to
adopt her and the state of Florida was not allowing
gay parents foster parents to adopt the children that they raised.
So I joined an ACLU lawsuit against the State of
Florida and the Loft and Cruteaux lawsuit. Two men who
(32:06):
were pediatric who were aids nurses and they would take
the children of the dying people with AIDS and take
the positive children and also the negative children, some of
the children zero converted, but they wouldn't allow them to
adopt these children that they had nursed back from the
brink of death. So I joined the lawsuit with them
(32:27):
because I wanted there to be a cause to coming
out more than you know, hey I'm gay.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
You know.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
I wanted there to be some something that would be
done to help children and need as a result, you know,
And this lawsuit felt like God was saying, hey, you're up, kid,
You're up.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
You know, well, it's using using what you have in
a very positive way and making a difference for the
right reasons. So that it isn't you know, you on
a soapbox or you making it about you. You were
making it about something bigger, which I'm so sure helped
so many people.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Yeah, it was. It was something that you know, being
gay was never hard for me. It was harder being
a child. So when I sort of figured out that
I was gay, I was sixteen. I was driving my
car by myself for the first time and I said
out loud, I am a lesbian, I am a gay person.
I am a gay person driving a car and I
am a lesbian. I like, I just had to say it,
(33:24):
and I didn't trust to say it in my house.
I didn't trust to say it anywhere except alone in
my car. And so that's that was, you know that
I didn't have the trauma of, oh, your parents are
going to find out a lot of gay kids worry
about their parents looking at them with disapproving eyes. I
didn't have that, you know, and so it wasn't as
(33:45):
big of a challenge as it is for most people.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
For me, that was the incredible ROSI o'donnal. If you
want to hear more from her, go listen to her
podcast Onward, which is available now wherever you get your podcasts.
Now What with Burke Shields is a production of iHeartRadio.
(34:10):
Our lead producer and wonderful showrunner is Julia Weaver. Additional
research and editing by Darby Masters and Abu Zafar. Our
executive producer is Christina Everett. The show is mixed by
Vahid Fraser.
What do you do when life doesn't go according to
plan that moment you lose a job, or a loved one,
or even a piece of yourself. I'm Brookshields and this
is now What, a podcast about pivotal moments as told
by people who lived them. Each week, I sit down
with a guest to talk about the times they were
knocked off course and what they did to move forward.
(00:27):
Some stories are funny, others are gut wrenching, but all
are unapologetically human and remind us that every success and
every setback is accompanied by a choice, and that choice
answers one question, now.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
What.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
How did you develop your comedy? How did you develop
a set?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
I did the open mic night and I told stories
about my family because at the beginning I did Jerry
Seinfeld jokes seriously like I had seen him on MERV Griffin.
And I went to the comedy club and I did
as many as I could, not only with his jokes
that he had written, which I didn't realize you had
to write your own jokes, because I thought streisand doesn't
write her own songs. Why do I have to write
(01:15):
my own jokes? So I got up on stage and
I went you know sometimes your carstals, you open up
the hood. What are you looking for? A big on off,
switch on off. I not only took his jokes, I
took his cadence. I took everything.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
And to ever tell him that he knows.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Because the other comics came over to me and said,
where'd you get those jokes, Rosie? And I said, uh,
Johnny Seinman, he was on MERV Griffin yesterday. They said
you can't do that. I said, I certainly can. He
didn't write those jokes. They go, yes, he did. And
I was like, I'm fucked if I have to write
my own jokes. So the other comics said to me,
try just telling stories about your family. The jokes will come.
(01:55):
And that's what I did.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
My guess today is the incredible Rosie o'donnal. Rosie is
an Emmy Award winning talk show host, comedian, actor, podcaster,
and most importantly, a wonderful friend and mother. We met
years ago, and I've loved watching her transformation from a
stand up comic to a fixture in pop culture, an
important and occasionally controversial social and political commentator, and an
(02:25):
activist whose work with marginalized communities is too extensive to list.
Here Rosie is honest, vulnerable, and committed to personal growth.
As always. I was just blown away by her candor
and her willingness to share so much of herself with
all of us. So here is Rosie O'Donnell, Rosie O'donnald,
(02:54):
Welcome to now What. I'm so excited a that you've
asked me to do your podcast, and I'm very very
happy about that, so thank you.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
It was my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
We've kind of warmed up a little bit, So thank
you so much for joining my podcast, which is called.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Now What Now What? What a great title.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
It is a great title, much like yours. Onward. What
made you decide you wanted to do a podcast?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Truthfully, it was doing a series, an hour long drama
series last year that took so much time and energy
and ended up being sort of disappointing artistically, and you know,
they fired the show runner in between, and the lead
mail didn't have a great time, wasn't happy about, you know,
being in it, and it just was I thought of
(03:39):
all this time that I'm out of my house with
my little ten year old daughter. It was too much time.
It wasn't worth not being a round her. So I
really did think after that show finished, what can I
do to stay home and still be creatively inspired? And
I had been asked to do a podcast years ago,
and I tried, and guess what, I had no idea
(04:00):
how to do it. I would sit there by myself
and I would try to just talk, like and it
was like, this is not going to work.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
And you didn't interview people. You weren't interviewing people. You
were just talking.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
I was talking. Yeah, that shows you a stupid way
to do a podcast. I didn't have anyone to interview.
I didn't have subject matters, I didn't have experts was
but I never I never aired it. I recorded them
and then I listened back to them and said, yeah,
I don't want this deal. I'm sorry, I can't do it.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
You call this just a start of a third and
big chapter, and I just love that.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah, third and final chapter. Truthfully, we have one to thirty,
and then we got thirty to sixty, and then we
got sixty on and how long you go on is
anyone's guess. But this is the third and final chapter
of a three chapter book. I like that.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
I don't know if I'm comfortable yet saying final chapter
because I feel like there's going to be a few
pivots in this chapter or that this.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yeah, they can be a lot of three many chapters, yes,
many chapters. Yeah, that's true. There's so many times that
I remember Nora Efron saying to me, you know, I
didn't start directing until I was forty eight, or you
know I didn't start doing you know, Georgia O'Keeffe never
painted until and she would always know people who started
things later than most. And I always hear her voice
(05:22):
in my head whenever I think, oh, I'm too old
for that. No, Grandma Moses learned to paint when she
was a grandma.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
I love that, though. That's as there is such a thing.
I mean, my mom didn't want to be called grandma.
Nobody want to be called grandma. And I just think,
you know, I'm always like, hurry up and have kids kids,
You're like, Mom, that's weird.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
My daughter has three. I'm a grandma now three babies.
She has three babies under the age of four, and
she's pregnant with her fourth.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Wow, one to three for now.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Boom boom boom boom boom.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Oh my godness.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
She's only twenty five and you know, it's uh, she's
had some challenges and you know, she's had a hard
hand dealt to her. I think as a kid, she
was born kind of compromised in some ways, and she struggled,
and we try to support her as best we can
and try to, you know, not let addiction wreak havoc
(06:19):
on the whole family.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Well that's a very very very hard, hard part of
a story. You know. How do you think being parents, though,
has helped her and changed her?
Speaker 2 (06:33):
You know, I'm not so sure that it has yet.
You know, I think that stable footing and some continuity,
and you know, I think that those things, when they
become part of a routine for her and she's able
to care for herself better, will enhance her love or
her ability to parent.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
I mean, that's young to have that many children. My god,
it is yes, has she Have you seen her mature
in some ways?
Speaker 2 (07:03):
You know, I'd like to say yes, but it's a struggle.
And you know, from alcohol addiction from your mother. When
addiction is in the equation, love doesn't matter. You can
love someone to death and want them so much to
be well and take care of themselves. But you know,
(07:25):
I've been going to alan On for a while now
to sort of deal with a lot of the stuff
that comes with it, and it's helped me tremendously. I
don't know if you had access to.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
That ever, not when I was thirteen, when I was
in my twenties, because I was continuing to carry the
belief that I could change the situation, I couldn't get
it quite out of my head. And then when was
took hearing other people's stories and also going to AA too,
(07:58):
because it was important for me to not just be
ACOA or AA or alan On, like I wanted to
know the different pieces that are affected in that type
of a relationship, and it did take a lot of
the onus off of me, which I will always be
thankful for. The hardest part is loving someone yes, and
(08:19):
not being able to fix it for that no, you.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Know, and never ever being able to stop trying. Like
the you know, the one woman said to me, listen,
if your addict is angry at you, you're doing something
right right, And that's a very hard part for me
to do, you know, Like when she has a need
or she'll call and she needs something, it's so hard
(08:43):
for me to stand in and not enable and not
be so upset when she's upset of me, you know.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
But also this idea of tough love. You know, we
never think really to associate the word tough with love,
you know, right? Did you learn that lesson? And through
alan On?
Speaker 2 (09:02):
I did, Actually I did with these wonderful you know,
there's a group that I am in that is mothers
of addicts and it's been so life saving for me.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
And I imagine that losing your mom at such a
young age brings this springs up a lot, because one
thing I always felt with my mother was the minute
she drank, I lost her, you know. And I've I've
had my younger daughter sort of give me that back
to me and saying it's annoying when you drink, mom,
and that put up put a bell and I was
just I can't repeat this. I cannot repeat this. And
(09:38):
it's the thing I'm the most afraid of. To give
listeners just a little bit of a background. Can you
talk a little bit about your childhood, like what you
were like as a little kid and wear it all.
Where the Rosie that we love, where was she as
a little kid?
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Well, we were a very Catholic, Irish Catholic household. My
mom had five children right in a row, so right
now in my family it's sixty three, sixty two, sixty one,
sixty and fifty five.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
So that is the meaning of Irish twins.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
You're not kidding. We had four in a row, and
people would always think my sister and I were twins,
and that my two brothers, my two older brothers, were twins,
but we weren't. We were all single births. And my
mother was member of the parish council at Christ the
King Church and was very connected to the church. And
she also had just started working when she got sick.
(10:33):
She started again because my youngest brother was in kindergarten,
so she started being as secretary at a school. And
then shortly after that she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
And by the time they opened her up, she had
had pain in her back and I remember just like
it was like around October Halloween she started not feeling
(10:54):
well and then she was in the hospital and when
they opened her up, which I only found out later,
everywhere so they just told her to go home.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Did she tell you all of this, any of you
didn't find any of this out until much later.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Yes, She brought us into the hospital one at a time,
my sister and I, and she gave me a little
gift from the people who sell things to people in
the you know those little sign like this. It was
a little emerald fake ring, and she gave that to me,
and she told me to never forget. She never said
I love you. We were not and I love you. Family.
(11:28):
We were very closed off to emotions. You weren't encouraged
to tell your feelings. Did you ever tell her you
loved her?
Speaker 1 (11:37):
No?
Speaker 2 (11:37):
But I did tell my grandmother who lived with us,
who was my mother's mother, who never could cook or
never could drive anywhere or you know, she was just
a home bound woman who my mom took care of.
And when she died, I thought, are they gonna let
her stay here? Like I didn't understand what had happened.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Were you all close your brothers siblings to me?
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Yes, we were. We were. Now there's two sides. There's
three of us on one side and two on the
other side. And it's been like that for years and
it's very sad. But if you don't have parents to say,
knock it off. Your all coming to Thanksgiving and for
one day you're going to get along. We didn't have that.
We didn't have anyone keeping us together as children, and
(12:22):
so now you know, we're estranged. And it's one of
the most painful things that's happened to me in my
adult life. You know, it's to be estranged from, especially
my sister who I was so close to for so long.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
It's such a tremendous loss. I mean, we will get
off loss. It's not. It doesn't. That does not only
define you. You've talked about the loss of your mother
really sort of defining a lot of your life. Yes,
but it feels like there's this theme of loss of
being estranged. How do you How have you found the
(12:58):
strength to process it all and remain hopeful?
Speaker 2 (13:03):
You know what it is. I don't really let people
leave my life, you know. I don't let like Jackie
and Jeanie, my two best friends, are still my best
friends since I was three. When I knocked on her
door when I was three, when we just moved into
Long Island suburbia, I said, do you have anyone here
who's three? And the mother let me in and she did.
(13:25):
Jackie and we are best friends still to this day.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
You were on a campaign, Hey, Do you have anybody
here who's three?
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Yes? Can you imagine letting your three year old child
walk across the street and go up and knock on
the houses that were just being built? Do you have
anyone three? And they did, so it was a big
bonus for me, and I keep people close, you know,
I don't really have much loss outside of the huge
ones like my mother and my sister.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
I feel like your sense of loyalty is just so pure.
I've seen it towards me, I've seen it towards others
over the course of many, many years, and I've seen
you take the high road. I admire your work ethic
and your resilience and feel like comedy is a part
of that. Right right, When did you first realize that
you were funny? Well?
Speaker 2 (14:22):
You know, my mom, I think, suffered with depression. And
when I would come home from school, if there was
Barbara streisand on, I knew it was going to be
a good day. And I would do my Barber streisand
impressions for my mother and for my nana. When my
mom was in a good mood, I would do it.
Isn't this the height and non Chalan? I would do
it all you know in my kitchen. So I knew
I was funny, and I knew that I was going
(14:44):
to be an entertainer from the time I was in kindergarten.
Other kids are bringing in Barbie dolls and I'm like, going,
I'd like to now do a number from the Canter
and Ebb musical like and I would sing for the
And IM not a singer, honey, you know I can
fake it a little bit, but I'm not singer. I'm
not a Broadway singer. Like, let's be realistic.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
You know I'm not either. You're not gonna sing. I'm
not gonna stand up opposite you know, Gheno and low
people away, right, But I do have. And you paved
the way because if it hadn't been for you in
Greece on Broadway, the whole idea of casting someone who
is not traditionally a Broadway star performer was the beginning
(15:26):
of my whole Broadway career.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
And in mine too.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
So you started when did you see your first Broadway show?
Speaker 2 (15:33):
I saw my first Broadway show in nineteen seventy three,
Bette Midler clams on a half show.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Oh god, was that not the best revolutionary?
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Revolutionary and I remember thinking, I want to be that woman.
I wanted to be here now. Streisand was not someone
I ever saw on a stage, So she was only
in movies. She was far away in Hollywood. She lived
in Malibu. I had no knowledge of all this but Broadway,
where I could wait by the stage door and see
a sweaty actor come out that just sang Pippen. I
(16:06):
would be over the moon, over the moon.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
How did you get into stand up?
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Well, when I was in high school, there was a
boy in my grade whose older brother was fifteen years
older than him, and he was a stand up comic,
and he came to see the show where you make
fun of the teachers called Senior Follies. And I had
written the Senior Follies show and I performed in it.
I was Gilda Radner, Rosanna and Rosanna Dana. Right you, Evan,
(16:32):
Notice you got a little spit in your mouth that
goes up and down and up and down. I would
do that. And so this kid says, I'd like you
to meet my brother Richie. And Richie Minovini, who was
a well known comic in the touring circuit, said to me,
I got a comedy club on Huntington and Huntington, will
you come and try I said, I don't want to
(16:53):
be a stand up comic. I want to be on Broadway.
And he's like, well, why don't you just try it?
So I went to this comedy club and I had
all my friends there. It was a Saturday night, and
everybody was, you know, laughing and cracking up. And I
didn't even have jokes. I would say things like Mary
Lynn is dating Billy and Bob doesn't know, and everybody
would laugh because it was true. It was just like
(17:14):
it was like being in the lunch room at my cafeteria.
And so Richie comes up to me and says, why
don't you come back tomorrow. Well tomorrow was a school night, Sunday,
so none of my friends could go. So I went
up and I died a horrible death. I had not
you didn't know you, You didn't know your audience. Now
I didn't know anyone in the crowd. And I was
(17:35):
standing up there going like, you know, here's my impression
of pac Man. Who whoa? That's what I literally. And
I was fifteen, sixteen years old, you know. So he
said keep coming back, and he let me go sit
and watch and I can't believe that my father let me.
But I went every night to these comedy clubs and
I would sit and watch and then Shirley Hemphill do
you remember her from What's Happening? Shirley Hemphill was the
(17:58):
headliner at the Eastside Comedy Club and she came in
a day early when I was doing the hosting for
the open mic night, and she said to Richie Manavini,
she's opening for me this weekend, and he said she's
not ready. She said, she's opening for me or I'm
not going on and you're to pay your fifty bucks
(18:19):
a show. And it was my first paying gig.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
And how old were you?
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Sixteen?
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Wow? So wait, then take me back a little bit.
So then you go to college and then drop out.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Yeah, I go to college and I had a one
six two grade point average at Dickinson College, which was
a D minus because I would not get up at
seven am to take World History. I would you know.
I had writing class I loved, a photography class I loved,
but all the ones that you were required to take,
I like, wouldn't show up. And I remember environmental science
(18:53):
I couldn't understand. And the final was there are three lakes,
and they told you all about the sedimentary stuff under
which lake would be empty after this rainfall. And I
run oh Lake B because there were some terrorists with
camels who were coming in to the country and this
was during the Iran Contra thing, you know, and they
(19:15):
stopped at this lake and the camels drank. And I
wrote this elaborate story, and she, this woman, professor Betty Barnes,
called me into her office and she said, now, miss O'Donnell,
I don't know if I'm going to be able to
pass you with this, but this is the funniest thing
I've ever read. I think you should go into comedy.
I'm gonna give you the D minus. And she gave
(19:35):
me a D minus instead of failing me. Was so
nice of her. Then I quit that college and I
went to Boston University, a conservatory where you had to audition,
and I auditioned, and I went there to be an actress.
And during the night I would go to the comedy
clubs and do open mic night. And one night they
(19:56):
said to me, so and so has passed out drunk.
Will you go with Dennis Leary, who was unknown to
this club in the suburbs of Boston and will you
do thirty minutes? And I said sure, Now Brook, I
had never done thirty minutes, but it was sixty dollars
for one show. And I went with Dennis Leary and
(20:17):
two other Boston comedians and I got up there. I
did about six minutes and then I said good night,
and then I'm sure I closed with whoa, whoa, whoa,
you know, because it was such a great pac Man Joe.
And on the way home, Dennis Leary said, listen, if
you say you can do thirty, you better have at
least twenty. And I said, well, thank you, I'm going
to try to get twenty. And then I dropped out
(20:39):
and I started getting gigs, and eventually there was a
woman in the club east Side Comedy Club that my
friend's older brother owned, and she came over to me
and said, Hi, I'm Ed McMahon's daughter. And I said,
you're not Ed McMahon's daughter. You're in the middle of
a long island. What are you doing? And well, my
dad has me as a producer of Star Search. I'm
(21:00):
here looking for talent. We'd like to book you on
Star Search. I was like, are you kidding me. She
gave me your card. The next day, Star Search called
me and I was on my way out to Los
Angeles and I won five episodes, and you got like
twenty seven hundred dollars each time you won. I was
richer than I had ever been. I ran out of
(21:20):
material on the fifth or sixth episode. I called my
comic friends at home and said, what jokes of yours
can I use? And they told me what I could do.
But I lost that six week and that was the
beginning of my career. And as a result of doing
Star Search, I got booked all over the country and
I started touring when I was like twenty two.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
I'd love to pivot to when you were on your
show The ROSI O'donnalds show and it ran for six years,
six yes seasons. What do you remember most from that
experience in that time?
Speaker 2 (22:01):
The love, truthfully, the love of the cast and then
the crew, The love of all those producers that helped
me do it. The love of the people I grew
up watching and loving, you know. I mean, I remember
Mary Tyler Moore came on the show and I went
into her dressing room and introduced myself and showed her
the notebook that I had kept since her show was on,
(22:23):
with trivia questions written in childish scrawl, and she was like,
is this real? I was like, it certainly, is so
getting to me.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
As if you would have made it up, Like the
night before, I'm gonna I'm going to write in a book,
I'm going to pretend.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
To Mary Tyler Moore exactly. All I wanted to do
was get that Mary Richard. But you know, I loved
doing it. I loved every minute of it. Now, there
were things that became too much. It became too big
too soon. It became an overwhelming thing to be shot
out of a cannon into the stratosphere and then say,
(22:59):
you know you got to stay up there. I'm like, no, no, no,
I don't. I'm only doing this until my kid goes
to kindergarten. Then I'm quitting.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
And then you're dubbed Queen of Nice.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Which was never accurate. You know, I it wasn't a
horrible thing to be called, but I didn't think it
was accurate. I don't think anyone who ever saw my
stand up in my heyday would think that I was nice.
I went after Woody Allen and I went after you know, sexism,
and I went after you know, I cursed. I was
you know, I was definitely not the Queen of nice
in terms of my stand up.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Isn't it interesting how it was kind of like a
negative I mean, you know that you take something like
that and in that context, and in Hollywood it's almost
it's it is an insult in many ways.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Well, at the time, people were being killed. On the
Jenny Jones Show, they had a person who was, you know,
upset that the person had a crush on him and
ended up murdering one of the former guests. You know,
Heralda was getting punched in the face every day. So
according to the standards of daytime at the time, with
the exclusion of Oprah, I was the Queen of nice
(24:05):
only because nobody was getting bloodied on my show.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
You know, can you talk to me about your decision
to leave the show.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Yeah. When I took the show, the Rose O'donnald Show,
I told them that I only wanted to go until
my son was in kindergarten. Well, I ended up going
until he was in first grade, and when the show
was a big hit in year two, they said we
want to extend your contract. I said, okay, I had
signed a four year deal. I said, I'll give you
two more years. That was six years now. The whole
staff knew this from the beginning. I told everyone, no,
(24:35):
I'm going to leave after that year. And everybody was like,
h you'll never leave. You're not going to walk away
from that money. You would never do it. And I
left and people were shocked. Howard Stern asked me a lot.
Don't you wish you'd just stayed on a few more
years and got a few more hundred millions? And my
point was this, if you ever have one hundred million
dollars and you think you need more, you have missed
(24:57):
the meaning of life. So I had more money than
a human should have, and I said, I'm done.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
I mean, that's a huge decision to make. And I
know that we've talked about a lot of your pivotal experiences,
but if you look back at your life, is there
a moment where you thought, oh shit, now what do
I do? You know? It's not this podcast?
Speaker 2 (25:19):
No, no, honey, not at all. I think that after
the Tom Selleck interview, where the first time I actually
confronted someone about their political beliefs about guns, and he
was the head of the NRA spokesperson at that point.
He was not the head, he was the spokesperson for
the NRA, and Columbine had just happened, and he was
(25:40):
on a few weeks after that. And after I did that,
and then the NRA started sending, you know, a lot
of mail, not all of it happy, And I thought,
at that point.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
What did I do?
Speaker 2 (25:53):
What did I step in?
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Was this when you were hosting your show? This was
when you were hosting your show, right.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Okay, yeah, Columbine was ninety nine.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
How did you move through it?
Speaker 2 (26:03):
You know? I moved through it by realizing that what
I had to say was important and that women aren't
just going to sit back and shut up as they're
killing our children in schools. And as a mother, I
was a young mother, I was very broken by Columbine.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Well, I mean, it was a devastating, It was just
devastating in every way. But there was also a shift.
And then for you personally, you go to the view
and you get to have opinions.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Yes, what was that? Like? Wow?
Speaker 1 (26:36):
It was you know what.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
I grew up playing sports. I'm a very big tomboy.
I played baseball. I played basketball, was on every team.
I was the captain. You know. I was very into
supporting other women. Title nine. Passed the ball, you get,
the layup, you pass, you run. You know. It was
team work. That's where I was going in. So I
went in there with a team work attitude. But you know,
Elizabeth Hasselbeck was on there and was the producer of
(27:01):
an all woman's talk show with supposally a woman's voice.
Was a man, an old sis white man, Republican who
was against everything that I believed in and stood for.
And he loved Elizabeth Hasselbeck and would go into her
little dressing room and give her notes and talking points
of the Republican press that they would release daily. She
(27:21):
had the talking points, and you know, I was trying
to get her to feel more than to fact. I'm like,
but what do you feel about this?
Speaker 1 (27:29):
You know?
Speaker 2 (27:29):
And I tried. Here's what I did. When I took
the job. I said to myself, I'm gonna love her
no matter what. I took her to a first Broadway show.
I took her kids to see the Nickelodeon shows with
me and my kids. I had her to my house
with her husband. They swam in my pool. I thought
we were friends in a civil kind of way, and
then one day on the show, she kind of threw
(27:51):
me under the bus and I was like, are you
fucking kidding me? And I finished the show, got my coat,
walked out and said I Am not going back. And
I didn't until a few of the years later when
they asked me to come back, and Whoopy was on it,
and you know it, we clashed in ways that I
was shocked by.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
That takes balls, all of it. I have to say,
do you think that they you were made to be
the villain in all of that?
Speaker 2 (28:18):
In some ways I was, but it was all right.
You know, I think I had produced my own show.
I was the solo boss, and here I was not
having any power to make decisions. There would be you know,
the Rory Kennedy documentary about Abu Grabe was out about
the torture that we did as a country, how we
(28:38):
sanctioned it. And Bill Getty wanted to do the new
Fall lipstick colors and I'm like, we're not going to talk.
And then you know, Bill Cosby was a big topic,
and I wanted to discuss Bill Cosby and Whoopee did not.
Do you regret doing that show? No, I don't have
any regrets in terms of like career and show business
like that. I feel like each thing I learned something.
(28:59):
But I know this is not the best use of
my talent to get in a show where I have
to argue and defend you know, basic principles of humanity
and kindness. I don't know it was. It was not
something that I would ever do again, you know. And
when she died, Barbara and I, you know, got along
after we went out to dinner. We knew each other
(29:21):
way before I did that show, before she asked me
to do it, and we remained you know, friendly towards
the end. And you know, I forgave her because she
was older and she did the best that she could
with you know, what she had to work with. But
it's nothing I'd want to do again. I could say that.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yes, Something that strikes me about your career is that
throughout it, there have been women who've lifted you up. Yes,
in your comedy and your shows.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
Well, and you know what's interesting, you know it's interesting too, Brooke,
is that all of my movies were directed by women. Well,
like I did League of the Row was Penny. She
picked me out of being a VJ and gave me that.
And then Sleepless in Seattle was Nora Ephron. She not
only helped my career, she got me an apartment in
her apartment building, the Apthorpe, and I lived there for
(30:13):
the whole time I had Parker as a baby and
was doing my talk show. And there have been women
who have taken me in and nurtured me in a
way that I wish all women did with each other.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
I mean, there is something very I'm sure your mom
can see this and can see that you didn't lose faith,
and that you weren't alone, and that there were women
that came to your rescue. I'm just getting a note
today my producer, Julia, wants to know if you'd ever
do a Now and Then sequel.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
I would love that. I would love to do it
Now and then Sequel. You know what's funny about the
movie Now and Then. My character was gay, she was
a lesbian. And in the film, I'm very close to
Rita Wilson's character and I'm a gynecologist and I'm delivering
her baby. And then I look up up from catching
the baby and I say to her, I love you,
(31:02):
you know, just friends like you know, not as a lover.
And when they showed the film, the producer said, let's
take out that she's gay, and they took every little
tiny thing that I had done to build the character
into an accurate gay woman and made her straight.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
God did that just piss you off?
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Well? I was like, this can't be really happening. Is
this really happening? But you know, this was before Will
and Grace, This was before Ellen was out, This was
before you know, and it was very controversial to be gay,
and it was contraver. My agent didn't know if I
should take the job because what if people find out
that you are gay? And I was like, come on,
I'm an actress.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
When did you come when did you come out?
Speaker 2 (31:44):
After I I had two foster children and one of
them we had for many years and I tried to
adopt her and the state of Florida was not allowing
gay parents foster parents to adopt the children that they raised.
So I joined an ACLU lawsuit against the State of
Florida and the Loft and Cruteaux lawsuit. Two men who
(32:06):
were pediatric who were aids nurses and they would take
the children of the dying people with AIDS and take
the positive children and also the negative children, some of
the children zero converted, but they wouldn't allow them to
adopt these children that they had nursed back from the
brink of death. So I joined the lawsuit with them
(32:27):
because I wanted there to be a cause to coming
out more than you know, hey I'm gay.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
You know.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
I wanted there to be some something that would be
done to help children and need as a result, you know,
And this lawsuit felt like God was saying, hey, you're up, kid,
You're up.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
You know, well, it's using using what you have in
a very positive way and making a difference for the
right reasons. So that it isn't you know, you on
a soapbox or you making it about you. You were
making it about something bigger, which I'm so sure helped
so many people.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Yeah, it was. It was something that you know, being
gay was never hard for me. It was harder being
a child. So when I sort of figured out that
I was gay, I was sixteen. I was driving my
car by myself for the first time and I said
out loud, I am a lesbian, I am a gay person.
I am a gay person driving a car and I
am a lesbian. I like, I just had to say it,
(33:24):
and I didn't trust to say it in my house.
I didn't trust to say it anywhere except alone in
my car. And so that's that was, you know that
I didn't have the trauma of, oh, your parents are
going to find out a lot of gay kids worry
about their parents looking at them with disapproving eyes. I
didn't have that, you know, and so it wasn't as
(33:45):
big of a challenge as it is for most people.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
For me, that was the incredible ROSI o'donnal. If you
want to hear more from her, go listen to her
podcast Onward, which is available now wherever you get your podcasts.
Now What with Burke Shields is a production of iHeartRadio.
(34:10):
Our lead producer and wonderful showrunner is Julia Weaver. Additional
research and editing by Darby Masters and Abu Zafar. Our
executive producer is Christina Everett. The show is mixed by
Vahid Fraser.
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