September 7, 2025 • 76 mins
Rosie O’Donnell has lived almost every version of life in the spotlight. From her breakout in Hollywood alongside Tom Hanks and Madonna, to her groundbreaking daytime talk show that redefined television, Rosie was one of the most famous women in America.
But with fame came ridicule, public feuds, and moments that cut deeply. She’s been celebrated, mocked, and at times turned into the punchline of her own story. And one of the most painful moments came when Ellen DeGeneres told the world they weren’t friends.
In this conversation, Rosie is raw, funny and reflective. She speaks about growing up in the shadow of losing her mother, her shy first attempts at romance, the highs and lows of talk show success, and the very public feuds that made headlines. She shares what it was like to be blindsided by Ellen’s rejection, and why that moment stayed with her. And yes, she even talks about her recent return to our screens in And Just Like That.
Rosie O’Donnell has lived a big, messy, fascinating life — and in this episode, she tells it all.
You can follow Rosie O'Donnell here.
Rosie O'Donnell is bringing her show, Common Knowledge to Australia in October. More information and tickets here.
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CREDITS:
Guest: Rosie O'Donnell
Host: Kate Langbroek
Executive Producer: Naima Brown
Senior Producer: Bree Player
Audio Producer: Jacob Round
Video Producer: Josh Green
Recorded with Session in Progress studios.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast. Mamma Mia acknowledges
the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast
is recorded on Hello, and welcome to No Filter. I'm
Kate Langrook, and today, what a magnificent day. We're talking
(00:31):
to Rosie O'Donnell, a woman whose name is synonymous with laughter, honesty,
and a fearless speaking of her mind. From a childhood
marred by tragedy, to breaking records on her groundbreaking talk show,
to acting alongside legends like Madonna and Tom Hanks in
films like Sleepless in Seattle a league of their own
(00:54):
and now and then, Rosie has lived a life in
the public eye that few could imagine. Along the way,
she's been celebrated, she's been ridiculed and sometimes made the
punchline of her own story. She's had famously public feuds,
and yes, we talk about her recent appearance in and
(01:15):
Just Like That. Who can forget It? In this episode,
Rosie opens up about her childhood marked by loss and trauma,
the lessons she's carried through decades in showbiz, her experiences
as a mother of five, and the moments that have
shaped her into the activist performer and person she is today.
(01:37):
Here is Rosie O'Donnell. And by the way, she took
me by surprise by showing up early. Who does that?
Nobody's ever early?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
I'm always early, are you? Yes? Always? All right?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Well, I've got to ask permission, miss miss? Can I
go to the dunny? Miss?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
What does that mean? I don't even know what that means.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
The dunny is Australian slang and it's the toilet.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Oh yeah, go to the danny by all means.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
The dunny, the dunny. You need to learn this before
you arrive in Australia.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Not that you're not kidding. There's so many things I
have to learn.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
What else do you think?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Well, you know, first of all, I'm terrified of customs
because I watch nothing to declare. Oh yeah, and you know,
whatever somebody has, like a plum or a grief, they
throw them to the ground border security strips from Yeah,
that show is terrifies me. And I'm also afraid of
(02:37):
the spiders.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Oh yeah, okay, And I.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Also like how everyone says yes, no, yes.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
No, yes, that's really probably our defining national trade.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah, where does it come from? Yes?
Speaker 1 (02:51):
No, yes, no, It just kind of developed, I think,
I mean, I think it's one of those things that
you know, I'm giving up on the dunning by the way,
because I'm so happy to have you here.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Well, if you gotta go, you gotta go. I can wait.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I was just it was a you know, I was
it was a preparatory we It wasn't just in keyth Yeah,
it wasn't an essential one. It was just like, well,
you and I are about to embark on a road
trip together of discovery, and I didn't want.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
To be I didn't want to have to stuff be no.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
That's right, and I don't want to be disrespectful to you.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Well, I would understand being a woman as sixty three
years old. If you gotta go, you gotta go, you know.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
And I think that's true at any age, to be honest.
You know, remember as were one you're older, you know,
as a kid, that thing where you'd stand with your
legs twisted together because you just didn't want to go.
What is that? Why do you hate going to the
toilet when you're little?
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Well, do you want to know this? I never pee
in public?
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Oh well I would hope not.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
No, I mean, like in a bathroom in public. I
never like, if I'm on this oh that I'm going
to take that's twenty two hours, I probably will not
pee the whole time.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
What do you do? Is it a psychological thing that
you just.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
I think it is. It's not like I'm telling myself
not to It's almost like when I leave the house,
my body goes yeah no, yeah, no, yeah, I did
it again.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Yeah, No, that's it. That's exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
I think that. I was a little kid and my
mom used to get very nervous in public bathrooms, and
she would put the little toilet paper like you know,
and then put the little seat thing on it, that
little paper, yeah, and try to make us like hover,
which is not.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Hovering not easy at guinea image. I can't hop it now.
I don't have the I don't have the thigh muscles.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Not a hover. No, nor do I I get that
right now.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
I'm more of a collapse.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Yeah, that's what I am too. I'll just collapse right
on it. But now it's like I never my friends
call me the cam because I just never will go
to the bathroom in public.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Okay, do you think that this is a psychological thing?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (05:20):
And what do you think it stems from?
Speaker 2 (05:24):
It stems from my mother making me afraid to go
to the bathroom in public. She had five kids, we
were all on one year apart, not even ten months,
Irish twins, and she would just get very overwhelmed when
we would go to the bathroom, and she would put
down all this toilet paper and everything. And so I
(05:47):
got it in my head that it's a very trying
thing to do. And like, even the whole time I
was at school, I never went to the bathroom. I
would go in the morning. I would when I do
a movie. If I don't have my own bathroom in
my trailer, I will wait the whole day. And it's
not like I feel like I have to go. It's
(06:07):
not like I'm holding it in. It's it's almost like
my body goes, Nope, don't do it.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
You know, it's interesting because you lost your mom young.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
When you.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Thread the pieces of her together, because I think always
as a child, you're always trying to work out the
tapestry of yourself, and often that comes from your parents.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yes, when you.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Have reminiscences like that of her, how much of a
complete picture do you have? Do you think in her absence?
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Really not a very good one I was ten, and
I have a child's image of her still, like I
don't know her as a woman. I never got to
see her age, I never got to see her go
through menopause, have children, your children, have become a grandparent.
I never got to do that. So I have like
(07:03):
a very idealized childlike view of my mother, and I've
spent a lot of time trying to get to know
her as an adult. She was an only child, and
when she died, we never mentioned her again, Like her
name was never spoken. Nobody said the word mommy in
(07:24):
the house. Nobody you know, we we we came over
to Ireland after she died. My father took five kids
who were grieving to the north of Ireland, not quite
Northern Ireland, but like Duney Gall and we never mentioned
her again. And when we came home from Ireland after
the summer, all of her stuff was taken out of
(07:46):
the house, so it was like she disappeared. Now at
that time.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Who had done that, Rosie? Was that like auntie neighbors? Yes,
and at your father's behatoor, yes exactly, And so obviously
he was not someone to share with you kids' mom.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
No, there was no Oprah Winfrey Show to learn about grieving.
You know, there was no nobody talking about the trauma
that that puts kids through. Right, it happened. And then
we went to church one, you know, a month after
she died. And you know how in church they say
and the parishioners who have gone to their rest, and
(08:33):
then they would say the name, and they said, my
mother's name is my name Roseanne O'Donnell. And my brothers
started crying, and my father got up and took us
out of the church and we never went back to church.
And my mother was the head of the parish council.
She was very into Catholicism, so we were sort of
robbed of every memory and smell and photo and instance
(08:59):
of her. I only have like three photos of her,
you know, and it's taken me a long time. This
show that I'm doing when I come to Australia has
a lot to do with my mom. It starts and
ends with her, the whole show. And it's sort of,
you know, me coming to terms with being a motherless
child and then becoming the mother And how do you
(09:23):
learn to do that? What guideposts do you follow? What
lanterns are lit in the caverns of your soul, you know,
to get you through when you haven't had that or
seen that.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
So you were very young, yeah, you were eleven, nearly eleven.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah, it was right before my eleventh birthday. So she
died on Saint Patrick's Day and four days later I
turned eleven.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
How was that birthday horrible?
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Because the funeral was on my birthday and everyone who
came to that afterwards had gifts for me. So here
I was grieving my mother and being given presents and
it just felt so wrong, you know. And my little brother,
Timmy is one day before me, so he and I
(10:13):
his birthday was on the wake and my birthday was
on the funeral, and we were besieged with gifts that year,
and both of us never really have loved our birthdays since.
You know.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
It's funny because of course people want to show and
would have wanted to show you their love, yes, and
to show you how they were feeling. And it's interesting,
isn't it that we tend to want to do that
with things, But things given in the face of like
(10:47):
such a devastating emotional catastrophe actually become tainted.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Totally empty. There was no you know, I remember my
brother Timmy got the gunfire at the Ok Corral, which
was a toy that we had both really wanted where
you had like a gun like and you had to shoot.
It was in plastic shoot like get a carnival like
knock down the picture of right. And I remember he
(11:14):
got it and we both looked at it and looked
at each other, and we never really played with it,
even though that was the toy that we wanted, you know.
So it was very difficult to grow up in a
place where you suffer a loss and then you're not
allowed to discuss it with anyone. You weren't even allowed
to say the word mom. So when I would get
(11:37):
on the phone and somebody would call and say, it's
your mother home, I'd say, no, she's out. I couldn't
tell anyone until I was in college that my mother
had died.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
And what was the atmosphere with your dad in the
house where your mother was gone.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Well, you know, he comes from a traditional Irish Catholic
family where emotions are not encouraged or displayed, you know,
where drinking is the way you get through things, where
talking and emoting were not his forte. So he was
very kind of overwhelmed and didn't know what to do
(12:17):
with these five small children. That I remember when when
he told us that she died, My little brother Timmy said,
who was only five, said who's going to take care
of us now? And I said daddy, And he said,
who's that? Who's that? At five years old? Because my
(12:39):
mother was the one who took care of us and
my father was at work. You know, back in the
early seventies, you know, men put on a suit and
went to work and didn't like their life and came
home and often had a couple of drinks and didn't
interact with their kids very much, and all of a sudden,
it was just him, and it was tough.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Who stepped up into the role, did anybody?
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Yes, the neighbors. So there was my mother best friend
across the street, Leoni, and she became the mother in
our family. Although for me, I went across the street
diagonal to Jackie, who was my best friend since I'm
three when I was three, knocked on her door and
(13:26):
I said to the mother, do you have anyone here
who's three? And she said yes, And we've been best
friends ever since. And that woman who's still alive she's
ninety years old. She took me in and got me
my first bra and sanitary napkins and all the things
that a kid needed who didn't have a mother, and
(13:46):
she filled in. And then there were teachers at school
who did that. You know, I was a kid who
was longing for motherly connection. So all my friends' mothers,
my friends would get mad at me. We were teenagers,
and I would always like suck up to the mom's
and they were having that normal reaction of pushing away
(14:08):
from your when you're a teenager. But I never lived
through that, nor did I want to do it, nor
was I prepared when my own children went through that.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Yes, because you'd not experienced it.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
No, And because I couldn't imagine not wanting your mother around,
because that was the biggest need that I had in
my life, was wanting a mother. There.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Do you think you're because running parallel with your like
so many so many professional achievements, but with you, there's
been a very strong current of family. Do you think
that's where that desire came from to forge your own family?
Speaker 2 (14:52):
And you know, my friends always were concerned and curious
and questioning about whether they wanted to be a parent.
But I knew it right from the beginning. I knew
that I would have a lot of kids. When I
figured out that I was gay, I knew that I
adopt a lot of kids. It was never a barrier
(15:14):
to me wanting to get my goal, which is to
have a family and make the family the center of
my life. Now you know, I'm The next show that
I'm doing is going to be called bad parenting because
I parented my children with the idea that a ten
or eleven year old would have about what made a
perfect mom. It wasn't an adult understanding of parenting. It
(15:38):
was a child's need. And so I'm going to do
a show that that's basically about what I learned at
sixty three, what I have accumulated, the knowledge of what
I did wrong, you know, and why I made those
sort of errors that you know, every person, every parent
(15:59):
feels that. I believe. But when you were missing a
mother and wanted nothing but to be the perfect mother,
you're pretty harsh on you yourself for the ways that
you didn't succeed.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
When you say a parenting like an eleven year old
would say, an ideal parent, is that like lots of
snacks being overly like not disciplining. How does that manifest.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Not disciplining not forcing them to follow through? So if
they signed up for gymnastics and they didn't want to go,
I would say, you don't have to go, and my
partner would say, well, that's ridiculous, they have to go.
I'm like, why do they have to go?
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Like?
Speaker 2 (16:42):
I didn't want them to feel pain, and I tried
to avoid it at all costs, and I smoothed the
road in front of them too much so that the
tiniest bump in adulthood became a big trauma for them.
They weren't used to being a survivor because I made
it too easy. And with my older two it's much
(17:06):
more pronounced because I was at the height of my
fame and uh easy they you know. Yeah. And when
you're when you're famous and you take four little kids,
you know, stare step to the mall and they're all
under six, everyone stops you and says, oh my god,
those kids are so gorgeous. But when you're famous and
(17:28):
they ignore the kids, everyone comes to you, and that
does something because kids need to be sort of the
center of the world when they're that age. And when
you have a famous parent, you're definitely not and it
affects them, I think in later life, and my older
too much more than the younger two. And then I
have the little one you know, who's uh twelve, yes
(17:51):
that's ten yeah, ten years younger, yes, exactly ten years
younger than my former youngest.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
But you know, the parenting mistakes which I think often
we recognize in retrospect. I have four children, and I'm
kind of in the seek of it still. It's one
of those things where you think it's going to abate.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
It just it seems it doesn't.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
It just guys on and on.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Well, I never knew that children would need their parents
past teenage teenager. So when my like thirty year old
son calls me and needs me as much as he
did when he was seven, I'm stunned because I didn't
have that. So I just sort of took care of
(18:37):
myself and we were all, you know, very resilient and
very able to tackle obstacles because there were so many.
But when my kids now maybe have a little bit
of a failure to launch more, you know, the older two,
especially when they have challenges in their life, I think
(19:01):
this is all on me, you know, not so much
with the two ones who are just a little bit younger,
but weren't in the height of my face.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
So you're talking about Parker and Chelsea, the two eldest.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yeah, yes, they're like thirty and twenty eight, and the
two of them have struggled, I think more than the
two younger ones. And it's almost like I was a
different parent. I had left my show when Blake was
a baby. I had Vivi after I was on TV,
(19:34):
and it was a different reality for them than it
was for the older kids.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Well, every child has a different experience of being their parents' child.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Yes, there's some Nate for Ghazy, you know that comic Ya.
He's very very you know, and he does a great
funny bit. I'm not going to paraphrase it, but something
like apparently my younger brothers were raised by their best friends.
And I thought that is so funny because I understand that.
(20:05):
I get that, you know, how you're you're raised with
different parents and their different levels of growth and maturity.
And you know, when my first kid was born, I
was afraid. I was nervous, I was worried, I was anxious,
and by the fourth kid, you're not, you know, it's
(20:28):
not you were an old hand at it. And I
think you can definitely tell that they had different parents.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Well, we say, in our family, our youngest learned to
eat by picking up the crumbs the others dropped.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
They're very resilient, and they kind of have to be
because you're outnumbered. You were very outnumbered.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yes, when you.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Were talking about your upbringing and your quest to find
someone to feel that your mother shaped hole in your
life because you also were gay, At what point did
you really did you always know and who was the
(21:13):
person that you could go to to share that with,
if anyone?
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Well, I think my mother knew, you know, because I
would never wear a dress, I would, you know. And
I had a sister who's one year younger than me,
had the same exact upbringing, and she's straight as can be,
and she had a mother die when she was nine,
you know, and I was almost eleven, so not that different.
(21:39):
But my older brother, one year older than me, is
also gay, and I think my mother knew that both
of us were gay and different. And when I wanted
to play the drums and she was in the hospital
fifth grade, I needed a permission slip, and she didn't
want me to because she didn't think girls should play drums,
and that a lot of things that I liked to
(21:59):
do were boy things like play sports and ride a
skateboard and learn to juggle and balance things on my hand,
like I did what were traditionally at the time more
boyish things, and I think it worried her. I think
it concerned her. But then she was gone, and I
kind of always knew, like I was never interested in
(22:23):
any way in finding out anything about the boys in
my class, but the girls, I totally wanted to know
all their secrets, all their stories. I wanted to meet
their parents. I wanted to, you know. And without even
really knowing that that meant that I was gay. My
focus and my interest was always female, and I knew
(22:45):
that from a very young age. And when I got
to be of the age where you had to start
kissing boys, I knew I didn't want to do that.
I knew that if I was going to kiss anyone,
even though at the time it seemed like unfathomable because
there was no one gay on TV in nineteen seventy three.
(23:05):
There was no one, and the women who were gay
like Martinez in Avtulova and Billy Jean King had press
conferences announcing that they weren't because those were the top yes.
And I remember it vividly, vividly that they said no,
they were not, and that they you know that there
were rumors about them, but they made a big point
(23:28):
of saying they were not gay. And I remember being
a gay kid thinking, oh my god, there's no one
out there. There's no one out there who's like and
it was very lonely and isolating. But when I got
my license, I was sixteen years old. You get your
drivers permit and you can drive on your own, like
within twenty miles of your house. And I would drive
(23:51):
in the car and say out loud, I am gay,
I am gay, because that was the only place I
could do it was in the car where nobody else
in the car with me and I was alone. And
that's how I sort of got myself used to the
fact that this was who I was. And then I
had a teacher in seven grade who was twenty seven
(24:11):
and I was thirteen, and she mothered me. She's the
first person to say I love you to me. She
was the first person to give me a hug Oh.
I opened a school and named it after her. I
still have it in New York City, the Maravell Arts Center.
And she took me into her family, and she was
(24:31):
the first person I told, and she was absolutely fine
with it. She was like, you know, you can't wish
that you had blue eyes. If you have brown eyes,
you can't wish it away. Ro just be who you are,
you know, And at that time, in nineteen seventy five,
that was very keeling and very freeing. And she too
(24:51):
died of breast cancer like my mother did.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
How much longer after you knew her.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
She died when right before Vivi was born, So that
was twenty two years ago. So I was a grown
adult in a relationship with children. But she died, and
you had two children that are my god kids, and
I'm still very involved in their life. And you know,
at the funeral, I sat in the front row with
(25:18):
the family. And she was totally a mother figure. Her
and Jackie's mother, Bernice really raised me in a maternal, loving,
consistent way.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Coming up next, Rosie recalls her first forays into romance,
when shyness and uncertainty about expressing herself made things complicated
when you started to feel romantic. So being a child
(25:55):
and knowing that you're into drumming is one thing. But
you know when you hit the point, as you said,
you weren't interested in kissing boys, when you realize that
your interest in girls was romantic, or when you felt
that first really strong romantic urge for a woman. When
was that.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
I think it was with Mary Rose when I was
in eleventh or tenth or eleventh grade, and we were
very good friends. And she's not gay, she's married and
has children. But I was in love with her, There's
no doubt about it. But I did not ever take
it to any kind of next level, nor did I
think that I ever would. It wasn't until I was
(26:36):
in college, my freshman year of college, that I first
fell in love love with a girl who was also
not gay. And it was unrequited, and but I was
as in love as I've ever been with anyone. And
I would, you know, I would see her everywhere in
the college. I would like see some She was the
(26:59):
first person I ever saw who had a hooded sweatshirt
with no zipper, and I remember thinking that was the
coolest thing in the world, you know, and Uh. She
has since moved to Norway, and and we had a
chance to discuss this when we were older, and she's
sort of apologized because she wasn't really understanding what it
(27:22):
meant to me. And and uh, even though we were
so close and we used to sleep in the same bed,
but never do anything because I was so afraid and
so you know, really catholic, kind of prudish, you know,
I had no uh, I had no game, I had
no moxie and I still don't. And people I've been
(27:43):
with are like, you know, there's not a lot of
rosie O'Donnell in you because they have an image that
I'm like this tough New Yorker that will you know,
be very kind of aggressive, and I'm I'm the opposite.
I'm like totally the bush, you know. I'm I'm not
someone I always like want to cuddle, I want to
(28:04):
like It's it's pretty funny that that the women that
I've been with have all said, you know, people would
be shocked to find out how you actually are versus
your image, you know. And I never tried to have
an image that was different than I was. It just
you know, from New York, tough boyish. You know, people
(28:26):
just assume strike told very not exactly, and it's very
not how I actually am.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
So if I think about it now, your most recent
foraight that we've all enjoyed you in and just like that, Yes,
that's not a million miles removed from you. Then for
you to play no, it's none who pops up in
New York City, very innocent Stana Broadway. Yeah, yeah, had.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Never been sexual. And you know, and I'm friends with
Cynthia and have been for many years, and it wasn't
acting to be in love with her. I you know,
I've been in love with her for a long time,
not in any again romantic or sexual way, but just
in love with who she is as a person, in
her politics and the way she loves her family and
(29:18):
her wife and carries herself in the world. So Michael
Patrick King, who created and writes that show, wrote it
for me because he knows me. We knew each other
since we did stand up together when we were in
our twenties. So he wrote that part for me knowing
that it wouldn't be a lot of acting on my.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Part, I know, which you all very capable of.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
By the way, Yes, I love you know, literally, my
goal was always to be an actress, never to be
a stand up comic. It always was to act. You know.
I loved I loved getting to do all the roles
that I have, and I kind of knew in my
forties that it would take till I was in my
sixties to start getting those kinds of roles, the Geraldine
(30:03):
Page roles, the Colleendhurst roles, the you know, serious actress,
dramatic act actress. And I've been very lucky that I've
had the opportunity to do that since i've been over sixty.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
You know, it's funny because when that was so audacious,
that scene in just like that, that meeting the whole
like it was properly shocking. And one of the questions
as a viewer at the time, not even aware that
I was going to have this conversation with you, was
(30:35):
did Rosie, Like, did you workshop that with the writers?
Did you workshop that with the creators? It came fully intact.
And how was it when you first saw the script
and you went my first sexual encounter as this nun
is going to be with Miranda, Like, how were you
(30:56):
when you read the script?
Speaker 2 (30:58):
I was fine, you know, I had done Niptock and
Julian McMahon, who passed away recently. We had a sex
in that movie and that show, and so I had
done a sex scene before, and I wasn't like nervous.
But I will tell you this, Michael Patrick King said
when he was directing it, you guys are in bed,
(31:18):
can you be a little more like you're in bed?
And I was like, you know, I can't really.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
It was too mighty or too no that I.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Was too shy, right, I was too you know. I
wasn't like if you're like you see people in a
sex scene, and people who have no issues kind of
with being a sexual, a lee alive person are able
to be physical in a way that I'm not comfortable with.
You know, it takes a lot. It takes a lot.
(31:49):
I haven't had many lovers. I've had, you know, much
less than all of my friends. And it usually is
a very long commitment. It's not a casual thing. I've
never had a one night stand. I've never you know,
just sort of been a free person in that way.
I've always been very vulnerable and very and very tender.
(32:18):
You know. I need it to be nice and not
and not not scary.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
And almost like you need to know a lot of
people feel very strong physical attractions to people. I personally
don't feel that. Though I can recognize that someone is
physically attractive, but I need to have some sort of
communion with them.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
It's exactly yes, I can't even go there. Like people
have said, oh, so and so is so hot that
you work with, and I'm like, no, I may look
at someone and think, wow, they're physically beautiful, they're physically
handsome or pretty, but I'd never think of sexual being
with them sexually. Like I always made a joke that
if you want to have a relationship, a physical sexual
(33:06):
relationship with me, you need like a big sign that's
I am flirting with it because I won't get it.
You know. I think everyone's my friend, and I don't
like kind of function on that level. And I remember
going to gay bars when I was young and never
feeling that that urge of oh that person's hot. I
(33:27):
want to let them kiss me. I have to, And
there's a word for it. I forget what it is
now demisexual where you have to have an emotional connection
in order to be sexual, and that's sort of where
it is me my therapist told me that.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Right, They explained that concept.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
Yeah, exactly, because we were just going over this and
trying to, you know, find my way to be more
comfortable in my own sexual truth. And they said to me,
this is what I think is happening for you, that
you need it to be emotionally there before you can
(34:07):
go physically there. And that's that's true for me.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
And then so what does it mean so as you
recently have done so you've changed really everything about your life.
You've moved to Ireland with Clay, You're now a dog owner,
(34:30):
a dog lover. Yes, it seems to me that you've
really pivoted into a new expression of yourself.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
You know, I think I've matured into it. And somebody
that I know, so, you know, with menopause comes tremendous wisdom,
and I think it's true. I have stopped sort of
caring about what other people think, and I've just been
able to sort of do myself in a way that
I never was before, even though my survival mechanism was
(35:04):
to be tough and to be you know, forward and challenging,
and you know, I would say what I thought, and
this was because I had siblings that needed to be
taken care of. And I remember when my mother died,
my little brother looked up at me and said, you
have to be the mommy now. And I took that
very seriously. He was five years old, and I thought, okay,
(35:27):
I do you know. So I've kind of come into
myself as I've aged in a way that is freeing,
and it's provided me with a kind of clarity and
ease that I never really had in my life.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
And how will that manifest? Do you think in terms
of a romantic life?
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Well, you know, I have a long term relationship that
is kind of complicated, but it provides me with tremendous
solace and stability. It's not kind of traditional, it's not
you know, the complications, you know, but I find that,
(36:15):
you know, every relationship I've had has been really long,
really long, and I don't do casual. I do like
an intense devotion. And so getting a divorce the first
time with Kelly, you know, was very, very painful because
I never wanted to do that to my kids. I
(36:37):
never wanted to do that to myself, but mostly my kids.
I think that I made the mother part of my
life the most prominent part and not the relationship and
not the wife. So correct, and that's not a healthy
way to do.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
No, and that's very common in all models of relationships,
in hatro relationships as well.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Yes, and I you know, I remember like for my kids,
I would think of them first, and for my Wayfeight
did not, and it was painful for her, I believe,
And you know, I had a tendency to dissociate and
to focus all my energy on the kids and on
(37:24):
my role as a mother, and that was my priority,
and it was known, and that had to be very,
very painful.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
You know. I was watching the crews that you did
that you organized, Yeah, the gay families and their kids
an amazing piece of activism, which at the time didn't
wasn't really presented like activism, which is why I think
it was probably so powerful. So you charted a cruise ship,
(37:55):
you opened it up to gay couples, their families, their kids. People,
straight people came along with their gay kids or whatever.
It was a really remarkable, uplifting docco. But in it
you are and so you're with Kelly at the time,
and you've I think you've got four kids. Then yes,
(38:18):
Kelly says, this amazing thing. Actually, you quote her and
you say, Kelly always sayes in a relationship, someone is
the flower and someone is the gardener. And you were like,
I'm the flower and she's the gardener.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
Yes, and that becomes very tired to both people in
that role. In order to really have beautiful, nurturing, caring relationship,
you have to take turns at being the gardener and
the flower. Yes, And that's what I've learned. But I
had no ability to do that. I just thought, well,
(38:57):
I wasn't good at taking care of people because I
had never been taken care of. I wasn't good at
taking care of anyone except for my children, because my
desire as a child to be taken care of was
so huge and overwhelming that it dominated everything. You know,
I don't want to say that, you know, necessarily Kelly
(39:20):
was jealous of the relationship with my kids that I had,
but I think she wanted some of that for herself
and I was unable to do that.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
And at the time, of course, you had a very
high profile, very famous, and even though you're not a
person who's led to the fame, you're led to the work.
It's impossible, I think, to not be affected by how
the outside world treats you differently when you have that
(39:49):
level of fame and in fact the totally yeah and
the time paucity that you have. So there's an inherent
inequality in a relationship.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Totally and financially, there was a huge inequality. And attention wise,
there's a huge inequality not just with my partner but
also with my children. Again, I talk about going to
the mall and having everyone focus on me and no
focus on the kid. You know, Kelly would everyone in
show business knew that I was gay because I always
(40:21):
sat next to her at the Emmy's. You know. I
never had a boy with me and was never pretending
everyone knew, but she was sort of pushed aside. You know.
My publicist was Lois Smith, legendary publicist of Marilyn Monroe,
you know, and she was an older woman and ran
(40:42):
and owned PMK. This very powerful. So when I started
my show, I met Kelly. I had two children. I
met Kelly, yes, my talk show and Lois, my publicist,
was like when we would go out in public, she
would get in between us. She would you know, yeah,
(41:05):
she would like run interfere in a way. And I
remember one time when I was doing Greece on Broadway
before I had children, This reporter asked me if I
was seeing anyone and I said no, and he said
and I wasn't And he said, well, what are the qualifications?
I said, all applicants are welcome. And he said would
(41:30):
that be a woman or a man? And I said, yes,
could be either one. Well, Lois called Helen Gurley Brown.
It was in Cosmo magazine. The writer was Patrick Pachenko.
I remember it vividly a gay man, and she had
it taken out, not at my request, at her own request,
(41:51):
had it taken out of the interview. And I remember
Patrick being sort of offended and felt like that I
had done it, but I had not done it, like
there were forces that be at that time that just
didn't want it known. It was before Ellen was out.
It was before everybody was closeted except Katie Lang and
(42:12):
Elton John that was it. Everyone else was not out,
and so the concept of being an entertainer who was
gay and still working was foreign to me. When Will
and Grace came out, they told me, oh, there's a
new show coming. It's a gay man living with Lucille
(42:35):
Ball like woman friend and I thought, well, that'll last
a week. Like you know, I remembered Love Sydney. Do
you remember that show with Tommy Randall. No, this was
like in the early seventies. It was a show where
he was playing a gay man, although they never said
he was a gay man. He had a big photo
of his dead partner over the fireplace. At the end
(42:59):
he would go over and look at it. Now, nothing
was said, but it was definitely implied, and the Catholic
Church went crazy and everybody was protesting it, and it
got pulled off the air. So I never thought it
would be possible in my lifetime to be an out
gay person and have a career in show business.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
After the break, Rosie shares the story behind one of
the most painful public moments of her career when Ellen
DeGeneres told everyone that they weren't friends. You mentioned Ellen
before when she came out in her sitcom.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
How was that?
Speaker 1 (43:45):
I mean, that was a sensation for viewers around the world.
How did that feel for you?
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Very threatening? Very threatening because you know everyone then wanted
to know, well, what are you gay now? She came
on my show and I felt strongly that I didn't
want to leave her out there alone, that I could
not act as though I was not the same as her.
So we talked before in the dressing room and she
(44:15):
said she was going to say that her character was
going to become Lebanese. And then I said, okay, well
I'm going to talk about that with you. Let me
in and she said okay. So I said, oh my god,
I like Casey Caseum, maybe I'm Lebanese, right. And everyone
who was gay at home got it, everybody, you know,
(44:36):
because I wouldn't leave her out there alone. I couldn't
do it. And so we had this you know, really
sort of decoded, coded interaction that anyone who was gay new.
But you know, the public didn't really pick up on it.
(44:57):
The news media didn't really, you know, and and nobody
would ask back then. But I remember it felt very threatening.
I was in on this very famous, this very success
esful show. I was winning all the Emmy Awards, and
it just felt like, oh, this could really threaten me.
But still my internal clock wouldn't allow me to distance
(45:23):
myself from her. I had to stand by her and
hold her hand, and that's what I chose to do.
And then, you know, it was funny because she never really,
I didn't think appreciated that moment. And she was on
Larry King and he asked her, when I left my
show on my own volition after being offered a lot
(45:45):
of money to stay because my mother died at forty
and I was turning forty, and I had all these
children and I wanted to be around for them and
go to their softball games and their school plays. Larry
King asked her, and Kelly and I were in bed
watching it, and he asked her, whatever happened to Rosio
o'donald her show went down the tubes, and Ellen said,
(46:06):
I don't know Rosie. We're not friends. And that was
like one of the most painful things that ever happened
to me in show business in my life. I couldn't
believe it.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Why did she say that I don't.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
Know because I have photos of her holding my newborn babies.
I knew her for thirty years, Like, I don't know Rosie,
we're not friends. It was so upsetting to me that
I had t shirts made I don't know Rosie, We're
not friends, and I gave them out to my staff
because it was painful, and you know, we've never sort
of gotten over it.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Did she ever reach out to you to explain it
or what her thinking was or no? I mean I'm
not the first person to say this, but she's a
strange creature.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
Well, you know, she's We're not similar. I can say
that for sure. We're not emotionally. No, And I was
never asked to go on her show. When I was,
it was long after they had been on for many years.
And she had the same staff as my show, the
same producers, the same everything. And now I don't blame
(47:13):
her for doing that. I didn't create the genre of
a MERV Griffin Mike Douglas book show. You know, this
was what I grew up watching. But I did think
that she was all of a sudden in the position
I was in, where she was starting a show and
wanted it to be successful and get the money and
the accolades that came with it. And instead of deciding
(47:36):
to stand next to me and hold my hand, which
is what I did to her, she did the opposite.
And I couldn't believe it. You know, I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
It's interesting you say she had the same producers and
the same staff, because your relationship with those producers and
that staff was very different than what led to the
demise of her own show, which was that the relationship
with those the workers, that people that made the show
(48:06):
was deeply unsatisfying to that they felt excluded and they
felt diminished.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
Yes, we had a family, for sure. I'm still friends
with many of the people who were on my staff
thirty years ago. I you know, I'm very proud of
them who all went on and did daytime TV for
the next twenty years. And we're still close. You know,
every anniversary we all get together and have a party.
(48:36):
And you know, I don't know it. My desire to
create family is the biggest force in my life and
I do it everywhere I go, and you know, I
do it with my staff here in my life and
in my house. You know, I create a family. And
I don't think that she's similar to me in that way.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Did you know when they were having troubles, the people
that you were still in contact with.
Speaker 2 (49:05):
Well, I knew the way she treated me must be
the way she treats others. And I felt, you know,
very betrayed, and so I didn't imagine that they had
a similar kind of relationship that I had with that
she had that with her staff, and you hear things,
you know, you hear things from from different people. But
(49:28):
you know, I'm now sixty three and she's you know,
a few years older than me. I don't wish her
any ill will, but you know, I never could kind
of get past it. And a lot of times, you know,
she has said or written me and said, why are
you still talking about this, you know, all these years? Ah,
(49:50):
And I didn't quite know how to answer that. I said, well,
it was profound for me. It was a profound moment,
and so she'll.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
Address it to that point, but not to the point
of resolution or explanation or assuming more psychology right now,
that's interesting.
Speaker 2 (50:12):
I would have apologized. I would have said, I'm really
sorry I heard you that much, and I don't know
why I did that, and it was a mistake, and
I hope you can forgive me. That's what I would
have done. But I think in her mind she thinks
I keep rehashing it for pleasure. I don't rehash it
for pleasure, you know, I rehash it because our careers
(50:36):
have taken sort of parallel, interwoven paths. Yes, and I'm
often you know where gay talk show hosts and we're
around the same age. So people would always ask me
about it, and I have a hard time not telling
the truth.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
There's one exception. She was never in Sleepless in Seattle.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
That's true, such or the league thereof Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'm very lucky. I had amazing movie roles. And you know,
again it's because of, you know, my need to emotionally connect.
Like Penny Marshall and Nora Efron, they became family in
(51:17):
my life and they're both gone. But you know, Nora
got me a department in her building, the Apthorpe, and
I lived there and her husband, Nick's office was on
my floor, and I would go to the Hamptons with them,
and Penny and I stayed close her whole life, and
you know, even though she struggled in a lot of ways,
we maintained our friendship. I'm still close to Madonna thirty
(51:40):
years later. You know, I don't let people go, you know.
And and so I think that a lot of my
success is the way that I love And on my
TV show, you could see that I loved Barbara streisand
that I loved the guests that I had on whether
it was Florence Henderson, from the Brady Bunch or somebody
(52:02):
like Tom Cruise. I loved them equally because they mattered
to me in my life and world. And I think
my success is largely based on my capacity to love.
And it made people feel warm and feel connected.
Speaker 1 (52:17):
What does it mean mean for those relationships? You're very
good at relationships and they're very alive, and so many
people speak with such love and fondness in regard for you.
But what does it mean for those relationships now that
you have moved to the other side of the world.
Speaker 2 (52:39):
Very hard, yeah, very hard. But I knew, you know
why I did. It was not a political statement as
much as it was self preservation. I knew that the
last time he was in office was very difficult for me.
Trump I was eating too much, I was drinking. Trump
I was drinking too much. You know. I talked about
(53:00):
him in two thousand and seven and he hasn't stopped
using me as a punchline ever since. And many, many,
many male comedians did what I did and worse, but
he didn't go after them in the way that he
went after me, because he's misogynistic and sexist and cruel.
He's innately a cruel human being, and I think that
(53:22):
our tumult caused a tremendous amount of seris in my life.
You know, it created a lot of problems. I would
be with my little child who has autism and CVS,
which is like a drugstore in America, and guy with
a MAGA hat would come over and go, hey, screw
(53:42):
you Trump one, And I have a five year old
with auto going why is that man cursing at us?
You know, his ability to denigrate people and dismiss them
and humiliate them encouraged other people to do the same,
and it was difficult when he was in office the
first time, even though there were guardrails up. So I
(54:05):
read Project twenty twenty five and knew that I had
to go to save myself and to be a fully aware,
alive and healthy parent for this child who was special needs.
You know, it's I never had a child who was
special needs before Clay, and that's where my focus is
and my commitment. So I wanted to take her to
(54:27):
a place where decency still lived and where I wouldn't
have to witness what he was going to do to
the country, which he outlined in The Heritage Foundation's Project
twenty twenty five and I read and was shocked to
find out most Americans did not read it. So some
Americans thought I was overreacting, And now they're liking saying,
(54:52):
you know, you were very prescient. I'm like, I wasn't
so prescient. I just did my reading and research and
I knew what he was capable of.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
It's interesting because you were not one of those people
who said if Trump gets elected, I'm leaving the country.
And they have been quite a few of those, but
you did leave the games.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
Most of them didn't do it.
Speaker 1 (55:12):
No, most of them didn't do it. You didn't say
you were going to do it, but you did it.
Speaker 2 (55:17):
And how is that?
Speaker 1 (55:19):
How long have you been in Ireland now?
Speaker 2 (55:21):
Since January fifteenth. I wanted to leave before the inauguration,
and I didn't tell anyone because I didn't want it
to be a big public thing. I wanted to go
quietly and keep my child's life calm. And also I
thought many people wouldn't believe it because I'm not a traveler,
like going to Australia has been a dream of mine always,
(55:43):
but I think I would have the guts to do it,
so I didn't tell anyone. I mean, I told my
older brother and my sisters. You know, I told my
immediate family, but even them they were saying, I don't
think you're going to do it. Ro I think you'll
go and then you'll come right back. But I knew
I had to do it. I was sure that I
had to do it, and so I came to Ireland,
(56:06):
where I had had two cousins who I knew from
when I was a child, who are here or won
my age, and one about twelve years older than me.
And I came knowing two people and surprised myself truthfully
that I did it and that it's been quite a success.
(56:26):
And then, you know, people say to me, why do
you still talk about him and the country if you left. Well,
I never gave up my citizenship, nor would I although
I'm getting my dual citizenship to become an Irish citizens. Well,
because my grandparents are from Ireland, and I care about
(56:49):
my country. I love my country. I am very patriotic,
and I knew that I would not be able to
deal with what was about to happen, and it certainly has.
And I think the United States is in serious trouble
at this point with him arming the national gaul Guard
(57:09):
and calling the National Guard, not on January sixth, but
now to cities where there are no unrest, there are
no insurrections, where there is not mass violence.
Speaker 1 (57:21):
Do you think if you because that has been a
huge price to pay for you having been outspoken, do
you think and not that I'm you know, you don't
strike me as someone who lives with your great but
you do live with reflection. Do you wish that you
had spoken differently in two thousand and seven or not spoken?
Speaker 2 (57:45):
No, because what I spoke about was not just making
fun of him. There were he owned beauty pageants, And
if you grew up in New York like I, you
knew who he was from the get go. In New York,
he's not respected and he never was. And I grew
up watching his planes be repossessed off the runways at LaGuardia,
(58:06):
watching him try to sell steaks and vodka. He's a
con man and he's a grifter, and he's a logo slapper.
He's not a builder, and he's all illusion. And if
you are a New Yorker you knew this. So he
had a woman, Tara O'Connor, who was I believe eighteen
or nineteen Miss teen USA or whatever his title was.
(58:28):
And she kissed a girl in the village, and he
made her have a press conference and apologized to the country,
and it was on right before the view came on
the live press conference, and she was crying and thanking
him for a second chance. And all it looked to
me was like a prostitute and a pimp controlling the prostitute, saying,
(58:49):
you're gonna say this to save face for me, And
I said that, and then I said some facts about him,
that he never paid his vendors, that he was charged
with sexual abuse by twenty six women. I said all
the facts about him that were very easy to find.
It was not like I had to do and this
(59:09):
amount of research. All you had to do was have
an Internet connection. And the American media, the Fourth Estate,
has really left the public down by not telling the
truth about him. They were complicit.
Speaker 1 (59:22):
I have never thought of it in the context of
that before. And I know there are people who say, Rosie, well,
you started it when you had a crack at Trump
and you poked the bear. But when you say male comedians,
you're right have been doing that for decades with no blowback,
(59:42):
and also other women he has picked off.
Speaker 2 (59:47):
Yeah, I mean I think that he is afraid of smart, informed,
strong women. And you know, he thinks women are to
be abused, to be grabbed by the pussy, as he said.
I thought when that happened that that would be it
for him. You know. I remember when Gary Hart had
a girl sit on his lap, a grown woman, not
(01:00:09):
a and that was the end of his candidacy. And
here he is saying what he says and being who
he is. And I think that strong women scare him
and infuriate him. And I'm one of them.
Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
And yes, yes, he was married to two strong women.
Speaker 2 (01:00:27):
I don't know how strong they were. I was at
his wedding.
Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
I had heard that you were someone's plus one. Yes,
And I went to Donald Trump's wedding.
Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
I was friendly with Marlon Maples because her leading man
in will Rogers Folly's was my leading man in Greece,
and so he was invited to the wedding. And we
were doing Greece on Broadway and he invited me, and
so we didn't stay very long, and we went into
the plaza or wherever it was that I don't even remember.
And as he walked down the aisle. He shook people's
(01:00:58):
hands who were famous in the audience, but he had
stood her up a few times, so people weren't necessarily
sure that he was going to marry her, you know.
So I was there and when he started going at
me like that was a very big moment where I said, well,
tell him, I have some photos of me at his wedding.
You know, I've never had a conversation with him in
(01:01:21):
my life. No, he wanted to be on my show.
I would never have him on my show. And then
we did a fundraiser for money where during sweeps, if
you would come out and sweep the floor, Swift would
give us your writings.
Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
Isn't it sets Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
Yeah, So once he came out and swept the floor
and I didn't talk to him. I just went like
that and that was that. But you know, I knew
that he and I were oil and water from the
get go. And any woman that he is threatened by
Taylor Swift, he attacks Taylor Swift. Meryl Street, he said
was an overrated actress, AOC, you know, AOC. He thinks
(01:02:06):
he's a low IQ person. You know, I think that
everything he says indicts him and strong women are his kryptonite.
He falls apart.
Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
Do you think that the rest of your life is
in Ireland or do you not think that? Futuristically and
the country's been very beautiful and reason to meet you.
Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
Oh, unbelievably. I'm much more at peace here. I don't
worry about violence, I don't worry about confrontation. I don't
worry about my child walking to get an ice cream
with her friends. You know. I met the Lollipop Lady,
which is the crossing guard here at school, and she
(01:02:51):
said to me, what's your name, And I said Rosie,
and your surname and I said o'donald. She said, oh,
just like the famous actress like me, you know. And
so she said to me, why do you walk your
kid to school every day? Nobody else with the kid
who's twelve, walks them to school every day. They walk
with them with their friends. And I said, well, I'm
(01:03:12):
from New York. Kids disappear on their way to school.
There's a constant fear that you sort of live with
in the city and in the cities sometimes. And she said, well,
you're not in New York anymore, Rose o'donald. You're in Dublin.
Ireland and you're safe. And it made a huge difference
in my life and my ability to calm down, my
(01:03:36):
ability to enjoy the moments. And there is no celebrity
worship in Ireland, and I think that's beautiful. Everyone treats
you as a person. They say to you, well, welcome
to Ireland. They don't say can I have an autograph?
Can I have a picture? They say you're welcome here.
Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
If the move was instigated twofold. I gather for Clay,
for Clay's wellbeing and of course by extension your wellbeing. Yes,
have you noticed a difference in your mental health?
Speaker 2 (01:04:10):
Completely? Completely? I am not as worried as I was now.
Ever since I was little, world tragedies affect me in
a way that they don't most people. And my therapist
has said to me, most people have windows in their house.
They have a screen, they have a glass pane, they
(01:04:32):
have a shade, they have curtains, and they sometimes have shutters.
But all your windows are open, so it comes right
into you and you're devastated by it. So as a kid,
when I watched the Vietnam War on TV, my father
would tell me I wasn't allowed to watch TV. Anymore,
because I would cry about the fall of Saigon and
(01:04:54):
all of the pain that we had to witness over
dinner every night, and every time there's a world crisis,
I don't do very well. And now there's a very
big world crisis, whether it's or the United States falling
into fascism, and I'm able to stay above the water.
(01:05:15):
I don't go sinking underneath. And I think a lot
of that is because I'm not in the United States.
And I have a son who's just newly married and
wants to have a family, and I know when he
has a child, I will want to be there and
be an active grandmother to that baby. And that's going
(01:05:39):
to be a challenge for me. Is it safe for
me to go back? Will I be all right and
my child be all right if I go back, even
for the summer to visit?
Speaker 1 (01:05:49):
You know, how is it when you've gone back? Have
you been back? Oh? You haven't. Not even to Broadway.
Speaker 2 (01:05:56):
No. I gone to the West End. I saw Avida.
It was fantastic. I saw a lot of shows on
the West End. But no. In fact, my daughter graduated
college and I didn't go back because the security people
said to me they didn't think it was wise because
I think Trump will use me to rile his base
(01:06:17):
to get them, you know, and I'm his nemesis in
his mind, and you know, and to them to a
lot of like a third of the country. And that's
a very difficult place to be.
Speaker 1 (01:06:33):
Very difficult. But a place that will not be difficult
for you to be will be Australia.
Speaker 2 (01:06:39):
Yes, I've heard that it's very much like Ireland. I've
heard that the people are loving and kind like Ireland,
that there's a warmth and and a pride in the
nation like Ireland. And you know, America is so big,
it's too big. It's too many people. And it's almost
like four different countries, the East, the West, the South,
(01:07:03):
you know, the North. It's very different. And I'm it's
so excited to come and I have dreamed of it
my whole life. The two places I wanted to go
was Hawaii, which I did make it too, and Australia.
And so when I got offered to do the Sydney
Opera House, I really couldn't believe it. For a couple days,
(01:07:28):
I was like, are you sure? You know? And iconic, iconic,
beyond words, and you know, in twenty thirteen, I was
booked to come here, but I couldn't go because I
didn't sell enough tickets, so it had to be canceled.
Oh yeah, So when they told when they asked me
to do this, I said, just so you know, in
twenty thirteen, I couldn't sell tickets. And you know, I
(01:07:51):
think Donald Trump has made me refamous.
Speaker 1 (01:07:53):
He's done you a favor, he really has.
Speaker 2 (01:07:56):
My brother said, if he only knew that he reignited
your career, you know, he would be miserable.
Speaker 1 (01:08:02):
That and a sexual lassignation with Miranda in it, and
just exact yeah, and just column A Columba.
Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
Right right, So you know, I mean, I'm thrilled that
their ticket sales are going well. And there's talk that
we may do other cities if we sell out in Sydney,
and that would be thrilling for me. I'm going to
be there for three weeks, and uh, you know, I'm
I'm over the moon about the whole thing. And and
my kid does not want to come. They have a
(01:08:33):
hard time on planes for that long. And my cousins, yeah,
my cousins are going to stay here with her, lovely
and take care of her and get school, and so
I'm happy about that. But it's the longest I've ever
been away from her, so that will be interesting to
see how I do, not how they do. I think
(01:08:54):
they'll be fine, but it's me that I worry about more.
Speaker 1 (01:08:56):
You know, you know, you've had such a vigorous social
life and social presence for so long, and you've navigated
public love and public few dudes and public scrutiny. How
do you want people to remember or think of Rosy O'Donnell, like,
(01:09:19):
not the headlines, but you yourself.
Speaker 2 (01:09:23):
You know, the first thing I think of is that
you know, she cared too much, you know, mostly about
children and women, and those are the people that I
always wanted to protect and take care of. And so
if I'm remembered for that, you know that that will
be a life well lived to me. I don't really,
you know, think that any awards that I've received, like,
(01:09:45):
I don't even have them. You know, I have a
lot of Emmy awards, and people are like, where are they?
They're in storage somewhere. Because I never wanted to have
this house that was full of my accolades. I wanted
it to be a house for children, like you know,
this is my house, right, It's little pigs and little
(01:10:05):
stuffed animals, and it's bright, it's colorful, like so, I
wanted it to be a family house. And so I
think if my legacy could be that she was all
about you know, family and women and kids, that would
be fine with me. But I know I'm an incendiary
soul in America that there are people who you know,
(01:10:28):
use famous people to tell their own story, and who
you like and who you love and who you load
really define who you are, not who they are.
Speaker 1 (01:10:39):
Well, it's interesting because your audience will have some of
those will have been the people that voted for Trump,
who once were Democrat voters. I think there's a tendency
around the world now for people to get voted out
as much as people get voted in. Yes, but I
never will No, but you are of appeal to those people.
(01:11:05):
There is a universality about you, as there has to
be in performs.
Speaker 2 (01:11:10):
They you know, and I'm I'm very very high on
the concept of uniting the country. That these people who
voted for him, you know, they were lied to by
the media. They were lied to by The Apprentice, which
was a fictional show reality show, and they sold him
(01:11:32):
for ten years as a successful businessman and it was
all a lie and they were lied to for a
long time by very powerful systems. And when they say
I regret it and I now see, we have to
say welcome back, come on in. You know, my sister,
my brother, come on back. We understand and it's not
(01:11:55):
your fault and we can do this together and save
our nation. And that's what I hope that. You know,
a lot of times people will write on TikTok or
something that I voted for him and I regretted it,
and people will say, well, too bad, I hope everything
bad happens. I'm like, that's not what I feel. I
feel like everyone who says that is entitled to have
(01:12:18):
the same respect and decency that we afford each other.
Speaker 1 (01:12:22):
Do you believe in God?
Speaker 2 (01:12:24):
Yes? I do? Mm hmm, you're not a kidding. I
really do. And I found that as I've gotten older,
it's it's grown my connection to to God and to
(01:12:46):
a spiritual truth. It's grown as I've gotten older, and
and it provides me with a tremendous amount of solace.
I don't believe it's a man in a in a
chair up in heaven. I believe that that's the universe.
The creation of the universe and the creation of all
of all things is God. And and I find it
(01:13:10):
in musicals. I find it in a baby's laugh. I
find it in you know, an old woman at Tesco
who was checking out the fruit, and I think that
would be my mom if she had lived, you know.
And I find that God in all these places in
my life. And it's been tremendously healing.
Speaker 1 (01:13:34):
That little motherless girl has made quite a life for
herself and quite a family.
Speaker 2 (01:13:42):
Yeah, it's hard to believe sometimes, but I'm proud of it.
Speaker 1 (01:13:47):
You should be, and your mom would be.
Speaker 2 (01:13:51):
I think so too.
Speaker 1 (01:13:53):
Rosie o'donald. Yes, thank you for joining us on No Filter.
Speaker 2 (01:13:58):
I just want to tell you this is one of
the best interviews I've ever had. It was you were
really new your stuff, and you didn't ask questions that
people typically ask me, and I'm very happy that I
did it.
Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
Well, you are just so fascinating, and you've been such
a gift to the culture and continue to be, and
you share of yourself so generously that it would be
remiss of me to not extend the same to you.
Speaker 2 (01:14:31):
Well, thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:14:32):
So much. It's an honor to have you on No
Filter and to have you with our listeners, and it's
very interesting to watch you now become the gardener as
well as the flower exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:14:46):
I hope I get to meet you when I'm there.
I hope so too, And thank you so much for
having me.
Speaker 1 (01:14:52):
May the what is it the road rise to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back. The Irish blessing,
totally true.
Speaker 2 (01:15:01):
I thank you for that, and I hope that's the
same for you.
Speaker 1 (01:15:08):
I'll tell you what. When they talk about breaking the
mold when they made certain people, they certainly break the
mold when they made Rosio o'donnal. This has been a
conversation that only miss o'donald could give us. It's insightful
and bold and entirely unforgettable and so honest. And she
allows herself such rawness and to go to places where
(01:15:32):
most people would kind of close up like a clamshell.
Few people have lived as loudly, as honestly, or as
unapologetically as Rosio o'donnal. And from her fearless beginnings as
a funny popular kid carrying private pain to breaking barriers
on television and in film, to navigating public feuds and
(01:15:55):
life under intense scrutiny. Rosie has done it all on
her own terms. But she also is capable, which some
people are not, of self reflection. She shares the stories
that made her laugh, the moments that broke her heart,
the lessons that have guided her as a mother, an activist,
and a woman unafraid to speak her mind. I can't
(01:16:18):
wait to catch up face to face when she's here.
Thank you for listening to No Filter. The executive producer
of No Filter is Nama Brown, The senior producer is
Bree Player. Audio production is by Jacob Brown, Video editing
is by Josh Green and this episode was recorded at
Session in Progress Studios. I am your host, Kate Langbrook.
(01:16:42):
Thank you so much for listening.
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast. Mamma Mia acknowledges
the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast
is recorded on Hello, and welcome to No Filter. I'm
Kate Langrook, and today, what a magnificent day. We're talking
(00:31):
to Rosie O'Donnell, a woman whose name is synonymous with laughter, honesty,
and a fearless speaking of her mind. From a childhood
marred by tragedy, to breaking records on her groundbreaking talk show,
to acting alongside legends like Madonna and Tom Hanks in
films like Sleepless in Seattle a league of their own
(00:54):
and now and then, Rosie has lived a life in
the public eye that few could imagine. Along the way,
she's been celebrated, she's been ridiculed and sometimes made the
punchline of her own story. She's had famously public feuds,
and yes, we talk about her recent appearance in and
(01:15):
Just Like That. Who can forget It? In this episode,
Rosie opens up about her childhood marked by loss and trauma,
the lessons she's carried through decades in showbiz, her experiences
as a mother of five, and the moments that have
shaped her into the activist performer and person she is today.
(01:37):
Here is Rosie O'Donnell. And by the way, she took
me by surprise by showing up early. Who does that?
Nobody's ever early?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
I'm always early, are you? Yes? Always? All right?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Well, I've got to ask permission, miss miss? Can I
go to the dunny? Miss?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
What does that mean? I don't even know what that means.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
The dunny is Australian slang and it's the toilet.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Oh yeah, go to the danny by all means.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
The dunny, the dunny. You need to learn this before
you arrive in Australia.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Not that you're not kidding. There's so many things I
have to learn.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
What else do you think?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Well, you know, first of all, I'm terrified of customs
because I watch nothing to declare. Oh yeah, and you know,
whatever somebody has, like a plum or a grief, they
throw them to the ground border security strips from Yeah,
that show is terrifies me. And I'm also afraid of
(02:37):
the spiders.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Oh yeah, okay, And I.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Also like how everyone says yes, no, yes.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
No, yes, that's really probably our defining national trade.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah, where does it come from? Yes?
Speaker 1 (02:51):
No, yes, no, It just kind of developed, I think,
I mean, I think it's one of those things that
you know, I'm giving up on the dunning by the way,
because I'm so happy to have you here.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Well, if you gotta go, you gotta go. I can wait.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I was just it was a you know, I was
it was a preparatory we It wasn't just in keyth Yeah,
it wasn't an essential one. It was just like, well,
you and I are about to embark on a road
trip together of discovery, and I didn't want.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
To be I didn't want to have to stuff be no.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
That's right, and I don't want to be disrespectful to you.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Well, I would understand being a woman as sixty three
years old. If you gotta go, you gotta go, you know.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
And I think that's true at any age, to be honest.
You know, remember as were one you're older, you know,
as a kid, that thing where you'd stand with your
legs twisted together because you just didn't want to go.
What is that? Why do you hate going to the
toilet when you're little?
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Well, do you want to know this? I never pee
in public?
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Oh well I would hope not.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
No, I mean, like in a bathroom in public. I
never like, if I'm on this oh that I'm going
to take that's twenty two hours, I probably will not
pee the whole time.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
What do you do? Is it a psychological thing that
you just.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
I think it is. It's not like I'm telling myself
not to It's almost like when I leave the house,
my body goes yeah no, yeah, no, yeah, I did
it again.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Yeah, No, that's it. That's exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
I think that. I was a little kid and my
mom used to get very nervous in public bathrooms, and
she would put the little toilet paper like you know,
and then put the little seat thing on it, that
little paper, yeah, and try to make us like hover,
which is not.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Hovering not easy at guinea image. I can't hop it now.
I don't have the I don't have the thigh muscles.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Not a hover. No, nor do I I get that
right now.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
I'm more of a collapse.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Yeah, that's what I am too. I'll just collapse right
on it. But now it's like I never my friends
call me the cam because I just never will go
to the bathroom in public.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Okay, do you think that this is a psychological thing?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (05:20):
And what do you think it stems from?
Speaker 2 (05:24):
It stems from my mother making me afraid to go
to the bathroom in public. She had five kids, we
were all on one year apart, not even ten months,
Irish twins, and she would just get very overwhelmed when
we would go to the bathroom, and she would put
down all this toilet paper and everything. And so I
(05:47):
got it in my head that it's a very trying
thing to do. And like, even the whole time I
was at school, I never went to the bathroom. I
would go in the morning. I would when I do
a movie. If I don't have my own bathroom in
my trailer, I will wait the whole day. And it's
not like I feel like I have to go. It's
(06:07):
not like I'm holding it in. It's it's almost like
my body goes, Nope, don't do it.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
You know, it's interesting because you lost your mom young.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
When you.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Thread the pieces of her together, because I think always
as a child, you're always trying to work out the
tapestry of yourself, and often that comes from your parents.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yes, when you.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Have reminiscences like that of her, how much of a
complete picture do you have? Do you think in her absence?
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Really not a very good one I was ten, and
I have a child's image of her still, like I
don't know her as a woman. I never got to
see her age, I never got to see her go
through menopause, have children, your children, have become a grandparent.
I never got to do that. So I have like
(07:03):
a very idealized childlike view of my mother, and I've
spent a lot of time trying to get to know
her as an adult. She was an only child, and
when she died, we never mentioned her again, Like her
name was never spoken. Nobody said the word mommy in
(07:24):
the house. Nobody you know, we we we came over
to Ireland after she died. My father took five kids
who were grieving to the north of Ireland, not quite
Northern Ireland, but like Duney Gall and we never mentioned
her again. And when we came home from Ireland after
the summer, all of her stuff was taken out of
(07:46):
the house, so it was like she disappeared. Now at
that time.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Who had done that, Rosie? Was that like auntie neighbors? Yes,
and at your father's behatoor, yes exactly, And so obviously
he was not someone to share with you kids' mom.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
No, there was no Oprah Winfrey Show to learn about grieving.
You know, there was no nobody talking about the trauma
that that puts kids through. Right, it happened. And then
we went to church one, you know, a month after
she died. And you know how in church they say
and the parishioners who have gone to their rest, and
(08:33):
then they would say the name, and they said, my
mother's name is my name Roseanne O'Donnell. And my brothers
started crying, and my father got up and took us
out of the church and we never went back to church.
And my mother was the head of the parish council.
She was very into Catholicism, so we were sort of
robbed of every memory and smell and photo and instance
(08:59):
of her. I only have like three photos of her,
you know, and it's taken me a long time. This
show that I'm doing when I come to Australia has
a lot to do with my mom. It starts and
ends with her, the whole show. And it's sort of,
you know, me coming to terms with being a motherless
child and then becoming the mother And how do you
(09:23):
learn to do that? What guideposts do you follow? What
lanterns are lit in the caverns of your soul, you know,
to get you through when you haven't had that or
seen that.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
So you were very young, yeah, you were eleven, nearly eleven.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah, it was right before my eleventh birthday. So she
died on Saint Patrick's Day and four days later I
turned eleven.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
How was that birthday horrible?
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Because the funeral was on my birthday and everyone who
came to that afterwards had gifts for me. So here
I was grieving my mother and being given presents and
it just felt so wrong, you know. And my little brother,
Timmy is one day before me, so he and I
(10:13):
his birthday was on the wake and my birthday was
on the funeral, and we were besieged with gifts that year,
and both of us never really have loved our birthdays since.
You know.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
It's funny because of course people want to show and
would have wanted to show you their love, yes, and
to show you how they were feeling. And it's interesting,
isn't it that we tend to want to do that
with things, But things given in the face of like
(10:47):
such a devastating emotional catastrophe actually become tainted.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Totally empty. There was no you know, I remember my
brother Timmy got the gunfire at the Ok Corral, which
was a toy that we had both really wanted where
you had like a gun like and you had to shoot.
It was in plastic shoot like get a carnival like
knock down the picture of right. And I remember he
(11:14):
got it and we both looked at it and looked
at each other, and we never really played with it,
even though that was the toy that we wanted, you know.
So it was very difficult to grow up in a
place where you suffer a loss and then you're not
allowed to discuss it with anyone. You weren't even allowed
to say the word mom. So when I would get
(11:37):
on the phone and somebody would call and say, it's
your mother home, I'd say, no, she's out. I couldn't
tell anyone until I was in college that my mother
had died.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
And what was the atmosphere with your dad in the
house where your mother was gone.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Well, you know, he comes from a traditional Irish Catholic
family where emotions are not encouraged or displayed, you know,
where drinking is the way you get through things, where
talking and emoting were not his forte. So he was
very kind of overwhelmed and didn't know what to do
(12:17):
with these five small children. That I remember when when
he told us that she died, My little brother Timmy said,
who was only five, said who's going to take care
of us now? And I said daddy, And he said,
who's that? Who's that? At five years old? Because my
(12:39):
mother was the one who took care of us and
my father was at work. You know, back in the
early seventies, you know, men put on a suit and
went to work and didn't like their life and came
home and often had a couple of drinks and didn't
interact with their kids very much, and all of a sudden,
it was just him, and it was tough.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Who stepped up into the role, did anybody?
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Yes, the neighbors. So there was my mother best friend
across the street, Leoni, and she became the mother in
our family. Although for me, I went across the street
diagonal to Jackie, who was my best friend since I'm
three when I was three, knocked on her door and
(13:26):
I said to the mother, do you have anyone here
who's three? And she said yes, And we've been best
friends ever since. And that woman who's still alive she's
ninety years old. She took me in and got me
my first bra and sanitary napkins and all the things
that a kid needed who didn't have a mother, and
(13:46):
she filled in. And then there were teachers at school
who did that. You know, I was a kid who
was longing for motherly connection. So all my friends' mothers,
my friends would get mad at me. We were teenagers,
and I would always like suck up to the mom's
and they were having that normal reaction of pushing away
(14:08):
from your when you're a teenager. But I never lived
through that, nor did I want to do it, nor
was I prepared when my own children went through that.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Yes, because you'd not experienced it.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
No, And because I couldn't imagine not wanting your mother around,
because that was the biggest need that I had in
my life, was wanting a mother. There.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Do you think you're because running parallel with your like
so many so many professional achievements, but with you, there's
been a very strong current of family. Do you think
that's where that desire came from to forge your own family?
Speaker 2 (14:52):
And you know, my friends always were concerned and curious
and questioning about whether they wanted to be a parent.
But I knew it right from the beginning. I knew
that I would have a lot of kids. When I
figured out that I was gay, I knew that I
adopt a lot of kids. It was never a barrier
(15:14):
to me wanting to get my goal, which is to
have a family and make the family the center of
my life. Now you know, I'm The next show that
I'm doing is going to be called bad parenting because
I parented my children with the idea that a ten
or eleven year old would have about what made a
perfect mom. It wasn't an adult understanding of parenting. It
(15:38):
was a child's need. And so I'm going to do
a show that that's basically about what I learned at
sixty three, what I have accumulated, the knowledge of what
I did wrong, you know, and why I made those
sort of errors that you know, every person, every parent
(15:59):
feels that. I believe. But when you were missing a
mother and wanted nothing but to be the perfect mother,
you're pretty harsh on you yourself for the ways that
you didn't succeed.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
When you say a parenting like an eleven year old
would say, an ideal parent, is that like lots of
snacks being overly like not disciplining. How does that manifest.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Not disciplining not forcing them to follow through? So if
they signed up for gymnastics and they didn't want to go,
I would say, you don't have to go, and my
partner would say, well, that's ridiculous, they have to go.
I'm like, why do they have to go?
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Like?
Speaker 2 (16:42):
I didn't want them to feel pain, and I tried
to avoid it at all costs, and I smoothed the
road in front of them too much so that the
tiniest bump in adulthood became a big trauma for them.
They weren't used to being a survivor because I made
it too easy. And with my older two it's much
(17:06):
more pronounced because I was at the height of my
fame and uh easy they you know. Yeah. And when
you're when you're famous and you take four little kids,
you know, stare step to the mall and they're all
under six, everyone stops you and says, oh my god,
those kids are so gorgeous. But when you're famous and
(17:28):
they ignore the kids, everyone comes to you, and that
does something because kids need to be sort of the
center of the world when they're that age. And when
you have a famous parent, you're definitely not and it
affects them, I think in later life, and my older
too much more than the younger two. And then I
have the little one you know, who's uh twelve, yes
(17:51):
that's ten yeah, ten years younger, yes, exactly ten years
younger than my former youngest.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
But you know, the parenting mistakes which I think often
we recognize in retrospect. I have four children, and I'm
kind of in the seek of it still. It's one
of those things where you think it's going to abate.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
It just it seems it doesn't.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
It just guys on and on.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Well, I never knew that children would need their parents
past teenage teenager. So when my like thirty year old
son calls me and needs me as much as he
did when he was seven, I'm stunned because I didn't
have that. So I just sort of took care of
(18:37):
myself and we were all, you know, very resilient and
very able to tackle obstacles because there were so many.
But when my kids now maybe have a little bit
of a failure to launch more, you know, the older two,
especially when they have challenges in their life, I think
(19:01):
this is all on me, you know, not so much
with the two ones who are just a little bit younger,
but weren't in the height of my face.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
So you're talking about Parker and Chelsea, the two eldest.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yeah, yes, they're like thirty and twenty eight, and the
two of them have struggled, I think more than the
two younger ones. And it's almost like I was a
different parent. I had left my show when Blake was
a baby. I had Vivi after I was on TV,
(19:34):
and it was a different reality for them than it
was for the older kids.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Well, every child has a different experience of being their parents' child.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Yes, there's some Nate for Ghazy, you know that comic Ya.
He's very very you know, and he does a great
funny bit. I'm not going to paraphrase it, but something
like apparently my younger brothers were raised by their best friends.
And I thought that is so funny because I understand that.
(20:05):
I get that, you know, how you're you're raised with
different parents and their different levels of growth and maturity.
And you know, when my first kid was born, I
was afraid. I was nervous, I was worried, I was anxious,
and by the fourth kid, you're not, you know, it's
(20:28):
not you were an old hand at it. And I
think you can definitely tell that they had different parents.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Well, we say, in our family, our youngest learned to
eat by picking up the crumbs the others dropped.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
They're very resilient, and they kind of have to be
because you're outnumbered. You were very outnumbered.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yes, when you.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Were talking about your upbringing and your quest to find
someone to feel that your mother shaped hole in your
life because you also were gay, At what point did
you really did you always know and who was the
(21:13):
person that you could go to to share that with,
if anyone?
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Well, I think my mother knew, you know, because I
would never wear a dress, I would, you know. And
I had a sister who's one year younger than me,
had the same exact upbringing, and she's straight as can be,
and she had a mother die when she was nine,
you know, and I was almost eleven, so not that different.
(21:39):
But my older brother, one year older than me, is
also gay, and I think my mother knew that both
of us were gay and different. And when I wanted
to play the drums and she was in the hospital
fifth grade, I needed a permission slip, and she didn't
want me to because she didn't think girls should play drums,
and that a lot of things that I liked to
(21:59):
do were boy things like play sports and ride a
skateboard and learn to juggle and balance things on my hand,
like I did what were traditionally at the time more
boyish things, and I think it worried her. I think
it concerned her. But then she was gone, and I
kind of always knew, like I was never interested in
(22:23):
any way in finding out anything about the boys in
my class, but the girls, I totally wanted to know
all their secrets, all their stories. I wanted to meet
their parents. I wanted to, you know. And without even
really knowing that that meant that I was gay. My
focus and my interest was always female, and I knew
(22:45):
that from a very young age. And when I got
to be of the age where you had to start
kissing boys, I knew I didn't want to do that.
I knew that if I was going to kiss anyone,
even though at the time it seemed like unfathomable because
there was no one gay on TV in nineteen seventy three.
(23:05):
There was no one, and the women who were gay
like Martinez in Avtulova and Billy Jean King had press
conferences announcing that they weren't because those were the top yes.
And I remember it vividly, vividly that they said no,
they were not, and that they you know that there
were rumors about them, but they made a big point
(23:28):
of saying they were not gay. And I remember being
a gay kid thinking, oh my god, there's no one
out there. There's no one out there who's like and
it was very lonely and isolating. But when I got
my license, I was sixteen years old. You get your
drivers permit and you can drive on your own, like
within twenty miles of your house. And I would drive
(23:51):
in the car and say out loud, I am gay,
I am gay, because that was the only place I
could do it was in the car where nobody else
in the car with me and I was alone. And
that's how I sort of got myself used to the
fact that this was who I was. And then I
had a teacher in seven grade who was twenty seven
(24:11):
and I was thirteen, and she mothered me. She's the
first person to say I love you to me. She
was the first person to give me a hug Oh.
I opened a school and named it after her. I
still have it in New York City, the Maravell Arts Center.
And she took me into her family, and she was
(24:31):
the first person I told, and she was absolutely fine
with it. She was like, you know, you can't wish
that you had blue eyes. If you have brown eyes,
you can't wish it away. Ro just be who you are,
you know, And at that time, in nineteen seventy five,
that was very keeling and very freeing. And she too
(24:51):
died of breast cancer like my mother did.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
How much longer after you knew her.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
She died when right before Vivi was born, So that
was twenty two years ago. So I was a grown
adult in a relationship with children. But she died, and
you had two children that are my god kids, and
I'm still very involved in their life. And you know,
at the funeral, I sat in the front row with
(25:18):
the family. And she was totally a mother figure. Her
and Jackie's mother, Bernice really raised me in a maternal, loving,
consistent way.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Coming up next, Rosie recalls her first forays into romance,
when shyness and uncertainty about expressing herself made things complicated
when you started to feel romantic. So being a child
(25:55):
and knowing that you're into drumming is one thing. But
you know when you hit the point, as you said,
you weren't interested in kissing boys, when you realize that
your interest in girls was romantic, or when you felt
that first really strong romantic urge for a woman. When
was that.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
I think it was with Mary Rose when I was
in eleventh or tenth or eleventh grade, and we were
very good friends. And she's not gay, she's married and
has children. But I was in love with her, There's
no doubt about it. But I did not ever take
it to any kind of next level, nor did I
think that I ever would. It wasn't until I was
(26:36):
in college, my freshman year of college, that I first
fell in love love with a girl who was also
not gay. And it was unrequited, and but I was
as in love as I've ever been with anyone. And
I would, you know, I would see her everywhere in
the college. I would like see some She was the
(26:59):
first person I ever saw who had a hooded sweatshirt
with no zipper, and I remember thinking that was the
coolest thing in the world, you know, and Uh. She
has since moved to Norway, and and we had a
chance to discuss this when we were older, and she's
sort of apologized because she wasn't really understanding what it
(27:22):
meant to me. And and uh, even though we were
so close and we used to sleep in the same bed,
but never do anything because I was so afraid and
so you know, really catholic, kind of prudish, you know,
I had no uh, I had no game, I had
no moxie and I still don't. And people I've been
(27:43):
with are like, you know, there's not a lot of
rosie O'Donnell in you because they have an image that
I'm like this tough New Yorker that will you know,
be very kind of aggressive, and I'm I'm the opposite.
I'm like totally the bush, you know. I'm I'm not
someone I always like want to cuddle, I want to
(28:04):
like It's it's pretty funny that that the women that
I've been with have all said, you know, people would
be shocked to find out how you actually are versus
your image, you know. And I never tried to have
an image that was different than I was. It just
you know, from New York, tough boyish. You know, people
(28:26):
just assume strike told very not exactly, and it's very
not how I actually am.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
So if I think about it now, your most recent
foraight that we've all enjoyed you in and just like that, Yes,
that's not a million miles removed from you. Then for
you to play no, it's none who pops up in
New York City, very innocent Stana Broadway. Yeah, yeah, had.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Never been sexual. And you know, and I'm friends with
Cynthia and have been for many years, and it wasn't
acting to be in love with her. I you know,
I've been in love with her for a long time,
not in any again romantic or sexual way, but just
in love with who she is as a person, in
her politics and the way she loves her family and
(29:18):
her wife and carries herself in the world. So Michael
Patrick King, who created and writes that show, wrote it
for me because he knows me. We knew each other
since we did stand up together when we were in
our twenties. So he wrote that part for me knowing
that it wouldn't be a lot of acting on my.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Part, I know, which you all very capable of.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
By the way, Yes, I love you know, literally, my
goal was always to be an actress, never to be
a stand up comic. It always was to act. You know.
I loved I loved getting to do all the roles
that I have, and I kind of knew in my
forties that it would take till I was in my
sixties to start getting those kinds of roles, the Geraldine
(30:03):
Page roles, the Colleendhurst roles, the you know, serious actress,
dramatic act actress. And I've been very lucky that I've
had the opportunity to do that since i've been over sixty.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
You know, it's funny because when that was so audacious,
that scene in just like that, that meeting the whole
like it was properly shocking. And one of the questions
as a viewer at the time, not even aware that
I was going to have this conversation with you, was
(30:35):
did Rosie, Like, did you workshop that with the writers?
Did you workshop that with the creators? It came fully intact.
And how was it when you first saw the script
and you went my first sexual encounter as this nun
is going to be with Miranda, Like, how were you
(30:56):
when you read the script?
Speaker 2 (30:58):
I was fine, you know, I had done Niptock and
Julian McMahon, who passed away recently. We had a sex
in that movie and that show, and so I had
done a sex scene before, and I wasn't like nervous.
But I will tell you this, Michael Patrick King said
when he was directing it, you guys are in bed,
(31:18):
can you be a little more like you're in bed?
And I was like, you know, I can't really.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
It was too mighty or too no that I.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Was too shy, right, I was too you know. I
wasn't like if you're like you see people in a
sex scene, and people who have no issues kind of
with being a sexual, a lee alive person are able
to be physical in a way that I'm not comfortable with.
You know, it takes a lot. It takes a lot.
(31:49):
I haven't had many lovers. I've had, you know, much
less than all of my friends. And it usually is
a very long commitment. It's not a casual thing. I've
never had a one night stand. I've never you know,
just sort of been a free person in that way.
I've always been very vulnerable and very and very tender.
(32:18):
You know. I need it to be nice and not
and not not scary.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
And almost like you need to know a lot of
people feel very strong physical attractions to people. I personally
don't feel that. Though I can recognize that someone is
physically attractive, but I need to have some sort of
communion with them.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
It's exactly yes, I can't even go there. Like people
have said, oh, so and so is so hot that
you work with, and I'm like, no, I may look
at someone and think, wow, they're physically beautiful, they're physically
handsome or pretty, but I'd never think of sexual being
with them sexually. Like I always made a joke that
if you want to have a relationship, a physical sexual
(33:06):
relationship with me, you need like a big sign that's
I am flirting with it because I won't get it.
You know. I think everyone's my friend, and I don't
like kind of function on that level. And I remember
going to gay bars when I was young and never
feeling that that urge of oh that person's hot. I
(33:27):
want to let them kiss me. I have to, And
there's a word for it. I forget what it is
now demisexual where you have to have an emotional connection
in order to be sexual, and that's sort of where
it is me my therapist told me that.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Right, They explained that concept.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
Yeah, exactly, because we were just going over this and
trying to, you know, find my way to be more
comfortable in my own sexual truth. And they said to me,
this is what I think is happening for you, that
you need it to be emotionally there before you can
(34:07):
go physically there. And that's that's true for me.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
And then so what does it mean so as you
recently have done so you've changed really everything about your life.
You've moved to Ireland with Clay, You're now a dog owner,
(34:30):
a dog lover. Yes, it seems to me that you've
really pivoted into a new expression of yourself.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
You know, I think I've matured into it. And somebody
that I know, so, you know, with menopause comes tremendous wisdom,
and I think it's true. I have stopped sort of
caring about what other people think, and I've just been
able to sort of do myself in a way that
I never was before, even though my survival mechanism was
(35:04):
to be tough and to be you know, forward and challenging,
and you know, I would say what I thought, and
this was because I had siblings that needed to be
taken care of. And I remember when my mother died,
my little brother looked up at me and said, you
have to be the mommy now. And I took that
very seriously. He was five years old, and I thought, okay,
(35:27):
I do you know. So I've kind of come into
myself as I've aged in a way that is freeing,
and it's provided me with a kind of clarity and
ease that I never really had in my life.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
And how will that manifest? Do you think in terms
of a romantic life?
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Well, you know, I have a long term relationship that
is kind of complicated, but it provides me with tremendous
solace and stability. It's not kind of traditional, it's not
you know, the complications, you know, but I find that,
(36:15):
you know, every relationship I've had has been really long,
really long, and I don't do casual. I do like
an intense devotion. And so getting a divorce the first
time with Kelly, you know, was very, very painful because
I never wanted to do that to my kids. I
(36:37):
never wanted to do that to myself, but mostly my kids.
I think that I made the mother part of my
life the most prominent part and not the relationship and
not the wife. So correct, and that's not a healthy
way to do.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
No, and that's very common in all models of relationships,
in hatro relationships as well.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Yes, and I you know, I remember like for my kids,
I would think of them first, and for my Wayfeight
did not, and it was painful for her, I believe,
And you know, I had a tendency to dissociate and
to focus all my energy on the kids and on
(37:24):
my role as a mother, and that was my priority,
and it was known, and that had to be very,
very painful.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
You know. I was watching the crews that you did
that you organized, Yeah, the gay families and their kids
an amazing piece of activism, which at the time didn't
wasn't really presented like activism, which is why I think
it was probably so powerful. So you charted a cruise ship,
(37:55):
you opened it up to gay couples, their families, their kids. People,
straight people came along with their gay kids or whatever.
It was a really remarkable, uplifting docco. But in it
you are and so you're with Kelly at the time,
and you've I think you've got four kids. Then yes,
(38:18):
Kelly says, this amazing thing. Actually, you quote her and
you say, Kelly always sayes in a relationship, someone is
the flower and someone is the gardener. And you were like,
I'm the flower and she's the gardener.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
Yes, and that becomes very tired to both people in
that role. In order to really have beautiful, nurturing, caring relationship,
you have to take turns at being the gardener and
the flower. Yes, And that's what I've learned. But I
had no ability to do that. I just thought, well,
(38:57):
I wasn't good at taking care of people because I
had never been taken care of. I wasn't good at
taking care of anyone except for my children, because my
desire as a child to be taken care of was
so huge and overwhelming that it dominated everything. You know,
I don't want to say that, you know, necessarily Kelly
(39:20):
was jealous of the relationship with my kids that I had,
but I think she wanted some of that for herself
and I was unable to do that.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
And at the time, of course, you had a very
high profile, very famous, and even though you're not a
person who's led to the fame, you're led to the work.
It's impossible, I think, to not be affected by how
the outside world treats you differently when you have that
(39:49):
level of fame and in fact the totally yeah and
the time paucity that you have. So there's an inherent
inequality in a relationship.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Totally and financially, there was a huge inequality. And attention wise,
there's a huge inequality not just with my partner but
also with my children. Again, I talk about going to
the mall and having everyone focus on me and no
focus on the kid. You know, Kelly would everyone in
show business knew that I was gay because I always
(40:21):
sat next to her at the Emmy's. You know. I
never had a boy with me and was never pretending
everyone knew, but she was sort of pushed aside. You know.
My publicist was Lois Smith, legendary publicist of Marilyn Monroe,
you know, and she was an older woman and ran
(40:42):
and owned PMK. This very powerful. So when I started
my show, I met Kelly. I had two children. I
met Kelly, yes, my talk show and Lois, my publicist,
was like when we would go out in public, she
would get in between us. She would you know, yeah,
(41:05):
she would like run interfere in a way. And I
remember one time when I was doing Greece on Broadway
before I had children, This reporter asked me if I
was seeing anyone and I said no, and he said
and I wasn't And he said, well, what are the qualifications?
I said, all applicants are welcome. And he said would
(41:30):
that be a woman or a man? And I said, yes,
could be either one. Well, Lois called Helen Gurley Brown.
It was in Cosmo magazine. The writer was Patrick Pachenko.
I remember it vividly a gay man, and she had
it taken out, not at my request, at her own request,
(41:51):
had it taken out of the interview. And I remember
Patrick being sort of offended and felt like that I
had done it, but I had not done it, like
there were forces that be at that time that just
didn't want it known. It was before Ellen was out.
It was before everybody was closeted except Katie Lang and
(42:12):
Elton John that was it. Everyone else was not out,
and so the concept of being an entertainer who was
gay and still working was foreign to me. When Will
and Grace came out, they told me, oh, there's a
new show coming. It's a gay man living with Lucille
(42:35):
Ball like woman friend and I thought, well, that'll last
a week. Like you know, I remembered Love Sydney. Do
you remember that show with Tommy Randall. No, this was
like in the early seventies. It was a show where
he was playing a gay man, although they never said
he was a gay man. He had a big photo
of his dead partner over the fireplace. At the end
(42:59):
he would go over and look at it. Now, nothing
was said, but it was definitely implied, and the Catholic
Church went crazy and everybody was protesting it, and it
got pulled off the air. So I never thought it
would be possible in my lifetime to be an out
gay person and have a career in show business.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
After the break, Rosie shares the story behind one of
the most painful public moments of her career when Ellen
DeGeneres told everyone that they weren't friends. You mentioned Ellen
before when she came out in her sitcom.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
How was that?
Speaker 1 (43:45):
I mean, that was a sensation for viewers around the world.
How did that feel for you?
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Very threatening? Very threatening because you know everyone then wanted
to know, well, what are you gay now? She came
on my show and I felt strongly that I didn't
want to leave her out there alone, that I could
not act as though I was not the same as her.
So we talked before in the dressing room and she
(44:15):
said she was going to say that her character was
going to become Lebanese. And then I said, okay, well
I'm going to talk about that with you. Let me
in and she said okay. So I said, oh my god,
I like Casey Caseum, maybe I'm Lebanese, right. And everyone
who was gay at home got it, everybody, you know,
(44:36):
because I wouldn't leave her out there alone. I couldn't
do it. And so we had this you know, really
sort of decoded, coded interaction that anyone who was gay new.
But you know, the public didn't really pick up on it.
(44:57):
The news media didn't really, you know, and and nobody
would ask back then. But I remember it felt very threatening.
I was in on this very famous, this very success
esful show. I was winning all the Emmy Awards, and
it just felt like, oh, this could really threaten me.
But still my internal clock wouldn't allow me to distance
(45:23):
myself from her. I had to stand by her and
hold her hand, and that's what I chose to do.
And then, you know, it was funny because she never really,
I didn't think appreciated that moment. And she was on
Larry King and he asked her, when I left my
show on my own volition after being offered a lot
(45:45):
of money to stay because my mother died at forty
and I was turning forty, and I had all these
children and I wanted to be around for them and
go to their softball games and their school plays. Larry
King asked her, and Kelly and I were in bed
watching it, and he asked her, whatever happened to Rosio
o'donald her show went down the tubes, and Ellen said,
(46:06):
I don't know Rosie. We're not friends. And that was
like one of the most painful things that ever happened
to me in show business in my life. I couldn't
believe it.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Why did she say that I don't.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
Know because I have photos of her holding my newborn babies.
I knew her for thirty years, Like, I don't know Rosie,
we're not friends. It was so upsetting to me that
I had t shirts made I don't know Rosie, We're
not friends, and I gave them out to my staff
because it was painful, and you know, we've never sort
of gotten over it.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Did she ever reach out to you to explain it
or what her thinking was or no? I mean I'm
not the first person to say this, but she's a
strange creature.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
Well, you know, she's We're not similar. I can say
that for sure. We're not emotionally. No, And I was
never asked to go on her show. When I was,
it was long after they had been on for many years.
And she had the same staff as my show, the
same producers, the same everything. And now I don't blame
(47:13):
her for doing that. I didn't create the genre of
a MERV Griffin Mike Douglas book show. You know, this
was what I grew up watching. But I did think
that she was all of a sudden in the position
I was in, where she was starting a show and
wanted it to be successful and get the money and
the accolades that came with it. And instead of deciding
(47:36):
to stand next to me and hold my hand, which
is what I did to her, she did the opposite.
And I couldn't believe it. You know, I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
It's interesting you say she had the same producers and
the same staff, because your relationship with those producers and
that staff was very different than what led to the
demise of her own show, which was that the relationship
with those the workers, that people that made the show
(48:06):
was deeply unsatisfying to that they felt excluded and they
felt diminished.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
Yes, we had a family, for sure. I'm still friends
with many of the people who were on my staff
thirty years ago. I you know, I'm very proud of
them who all went on and did daytime TV for
the next twenty years. And we're still close. You know,
every anniversary we all get together and have a party.
(48:36):
And you know, I don't know it. My desire to
create family is the biggest force in my life and
I do it everywhere I go, and you know, I
do it with my staff here in my life and
in my house. You know, I create a family. And
I don't think that she's similar to me in that way.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Did you know when they were having troubles, the people
that you were still in contact with.
Speaker 2 (49:05):
Well, I knew the way she treated me must be
the way she treats others. And I felt, you know,
very betrayed, and so I didn't imagine that they had
a similar kind of relationship that I had with that
she had that with her staff, and you hear things,
you know, you hear things from from different people. But
(49:28):
you know, I'm now sixty three and she's you know,
a few years older than me. I don't wish her
any ill will, but you know, I never could kind
of get past it. And a lot of times, you know,
she has said or written me and said, why are
you still talking about this, you know, all these years? Ah,
(49:50):
And I didn't quite know how to answer that. I said, well,
it was profound for me. It was a profound moment,
and so she'll.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
Address it to that point, but not to the point
of resolution or explanation or assuming more psychology right now,
that's interesting.
Speaker 2 (50:12):
I would have apologized. I would have said, I'm really
sorry I heard you that much, and I don't know
why I did that, and it was a mistake, and
I hope you can forgive me. That's what I would
have done. But I think in her mind she thinks
I keep rehashing it for pleasure. I don't rehash it
for pleasure, you know, I rehash it because our careers
(50:36):
have taken sort of parallel, interwoven paths. Yes, and I'm
often you know where gay talk show hosts and we're
around the same age. So people would always ask me
about it, and I have a hard time not telling
the truth.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
There's one exception. She was never in Sleepless in Seattle.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
That's true, such or the league thereof Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'm very lucky. I had amazing movie roles. And you know,
again it's because of, you know, my need to emotionally connect.
Like Penny Marshall and Nora Efron, they became family in
(51:17):
my life and they're both gone. But you know, Nora
got me a department in her building, the Apthorpe, and
I lived there and her husband, Nick's office was on
my floor, and I would go to the Hamptons with them,
and Penny and I stayed close her whole life, and
you know, even though she struggled in a lot of ways,
we maintained our friendship. I'm still close to Madonna thirty
(51:40):
years later. You know, I don't let people go, you know.
And and so I think that a lot of my
success is the way that I love And on my
TV show, you could see that I loved Barbara streisand
that I loved the guests that I had on whether
it was Florence Henderson, from the Brady Bunch or somebody
(52:02):
like Tom Cruise. I loved them equally because they mattered
to me in my life and world. And I think
my success is largely based on my capacity to love.
And it made people feel warm and feel connected.
Speaker 1 (52:17):
What does it mean mean for those relationships? You're very
good at relationships and they're very alive, and so many
people speak with such love and fondness in regard for you.
But what does it mean for those relationships now that
you have moved to the other side of the world.
Speaker 2 (52:39):
Very hard, yeah, very hard. But I knew, you know
why I did. It was not a political statement as
much as it was self preservation. I knew that the
last time he was in office was very difficult for me.
Trump I was eating too much, I was drinking. Trump
I was drinking too much. You know. I talked about
(53:00):
him in two thousand and seven and he hasn't stopped
using me as a punchline ever since. And many, many,
many male comedians did what I did and worse, but
he didn't go after them in the way that he
went after me, because he's misogynistic and sexist and cruel.
He's innately a cruel human being, and I think that
(53:22):
our tumult caused a tremendous amount of seris in my life.
You know, it created a lot of problems. I would
be with my little child who has autism and CVS,
which is like a drugstore in America, and guy with
a MAGA hat would come over and go, hey, screw
(53:42):
you Trump one, And I have a five year old
with auto going why is that man cursing at us?
You know, his ability to denigrate people and dismiss them
and humiliate them encouraged other people to do the same,
and it was difficult when he was in office the
first time, even though there were guardrails up. So I
(54:05):
read Project twenty twenty five and knew that I had
to go to save myself and to be a fully aware,
alive and healthy parent for this child who was special needs.
You know, it's I never had a child who was
special needs before Clay, and that's where my focus is
and my commitment. So I wanted to take her to
(54:27):
a place where decency still lived and where I wouldn't
have to witness what he was going to do to
the country, which he outlined in The Heritage Foundation's Project
twenty twenty five and I read and was shocked to
find out most Americans did not read it. So some
Americans thought I was overreacting, And now they're liking saying,
(54:52):
you know, you were very prescient. I'm like, I wasn't
so prescient. I just did my reading and research and
I knew what he was capable of.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
It's interesting because you were not one of those people
who said if Trump gets elected, I'm leaving the country.
And they have been quite a few of those, but
you did leave the games.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
Most of them didn't do it.
Speaker 1 (55:12):
No, most of them didn't do it. You didn't say
you were going to do it, but you did it.
Speaker 2 (55:17):
And how is that?
Speaker 1 (55:19):
How long have you been in Ireland now?
Speaker 2 (55:21):
Since January fifteenth. I wanted to leave before the inauguration,
and I didn't tell anyone because I didn't want it
to be a big public thing. I wanted to go
quietly and keep my child's life calm. And also I
thought many people wouldn't believe it because I'm not a traveler,
like going to Australia has been a dream of mine always,
(55:43):
but I think I would have the guts to do it,
so I didn't tell anyone. I mean, I told my
older brother and my sisters. You know, I told my
immediate family, but even them they were saying, I don't
think you're going to do it. Ro I think you'll
go and then you'll come right back. But I knew
I had to do it. I was sure that I
had to do it, and so I came to Ireland,
(56:06):
where I had had two cousins who I knew from
when I was a child, who are here or won
my age, and one about twelve years older than me.
And I came knowing two people and surprised myself truthfully
that I did it and that it's been quite a success.
(56:26):
And then, you know, people say to me, why do
you still talk about him and the country if you left. Well,
I never gave up my citizenship, nor would I although
I'm getting my dual citizenship to become an Irish citizens. Well,
because my grandparents are from Ireland, and I care about
(56:49):
my country. I love my country. I am very patriotic,
and I knew that I would not be able to
deal with what was about to happen, and it certainly has.
And I think the United States is in serious trouble
at this point with him arming the national gaul Guard
(57:09):
and calling the National Guard, not on January sixth, but
now to cities where there are no unrest, there are
no insurrections, where there is not mass violence.
Speaker 1 (57:21):
Do you think if you because that has been a
huge price to pay for you having been outspoken, do
you think and not that I'm you know, you don't
strike me as someone who lives with your great but
you do live with reflection. Do you wish that you
had spoken differently in two thousand and seven or not spoken?
Speaker 2 (57:45):
No, because what I spoke about was not just making
fun of him. There were he owned beauty pageants, And
if you grew up in New York like I, you
knew who he was from the get go. In New York,
he's not respected and he never was. And I grew
up watching his planes be repossessed off the runways at LaGuardia,
(58:06):
watching him try to sell steaks and vodka. He's a
con man and he's a grifter, and he's a logo slapper.
He's not a builder, and he's all illusion. And if
you are a New Yorker you knew this. So he
had a woman, Tara O'Connor, who was I believe eighteen
or nineteen Miss teen USA or whatever his title was.
(58:28):
And she kissed a girl in the village, and he
made her have a press conference and apologized to the country,
and it was on right before the view came on
the live press conference, and she was crying and thanking
him for a second chance. And all it looked to
me was like a prostitute and a pimp controlling the prostitute, saying,
(58:49):
you're gonna say this to save face for me, And
I said that, and then I said some facts about him,
that he never paid his vendors, that he was charged
with sexual abuse by twenty six women. I said all
the facts about him that were very easy to find.
It was not like I had to do and this
(59:09):
amount of research. All you had to do was have
an Internet connection. And the American media, the Fourth Estate,
has really left the public down by not telling the
truth about him. They were complicit.
Speaker 1 (59:22):
I have never thought of it in the context of
that before. And I know there are people who say, Rosie, well,
you started it when you had a crack at Trump
and you poked the bear. But when you say male comedians,
you're right have been doing that for decades with no blowback,
(59:42):
and also other women he has picked off.
Speaker 2 (59:47):
Yeah, I mean I think that he is afraid of smart, informed,
strong women. And you know, he thinks women are to
be abused, to be grabbed by the pussy, as he said.
I thought when that happened that that would be it
for him. You know. I remember when Gary Hart had
a girl sit on his lap, a grown woman, not
(01:00:09):
a and that was the end of his candidacy. And
here he is saying what he says and being who
he is. And I think that strong women scare him
and infuriate him. And I'm one of them.
Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
And yes, yes, he was married to two strong women.
Speaker 2 (01:00:27):
I don't know how strong they were. I was at
his wedding.
Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
I had heard that you were someone's plus one. Yes,
And I went to Donald Trump's wedding.
Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
I was friendly with Marlon Maples because her leading man
in will Rogers Folly's was my leading man in Greece,
and so he was invited to the wedding. And we
were doing Greece on Broadway and he invited me, and
so we didn't stay very long, and we went into
the plaza or wherever it was that I don't even remember.
And as he walked down the aisle. He shook people's
(01:00:58):
hands who were famous in the audience, but he had
stood her up a few times, so people weren't necessarily
sure that he was going to marry her, you know.
So I was there and when he started going at
me like that was a very big moment where I said, well,
tell him, I have some photos of me at his wedding.
You know, I've never had a conversation with him in
(01:01:21):
my life. No, he wanted to be on my show.
I would never have him on my show. And then
we did a fundraiser for money where during sweeps, if
you would come out and sweep the floor, Swift would
give us your writings.
Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
Isn't it sets Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
Yeah, So once he came out and swept the floor
and I didn't talk to him. I just went like
that and that was that. But you know, I knew
that he and I were oil and water from the
get go. And any woman that he is threatened by
Taylor Swift, he attacks Taylor Swift. Meryl Street, he said
was an overrated actress, AOC, you know, AOC. He thinks
(01:02:06):
he's a low IQ person. You know, I think that
everything he says indicts him and strong women are his kryptonite.
He falls apart.
Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
Do you think that the rest of your life is
in Ireland or do you not think that? Futuristically and
the country's been very beautiful and reason to meet you.
Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
Oh, unbelievably. I'm much more at peace here. I don't
worry about violence, I don't worry about confrontation. I don't
worry about my child walking to get an ice cream
with her friends. You know. I met the Lollipop Lady,
which is the crossing guard here at school, and she
(01:02:51):
said to me, what's your name, And I said Rosie,
and your surname and I said o'donald. She said, oh,
just like the famous actress like me, you know. And
so she said to me, why do you walk your
kid to school every day? Nobody else with the kid
who's twelve, walks them to school every day. They walk
with them with their friends. And I said, well, I'm
(01:03:12):
from New York. Kids disappear on their way to school.
There's a constant fear that you sort of live with
in the city and in the cities sometimes. And she said, well,
you're not in New York anymore, Rose o'donald. You're in Dublin.
Ireland and you're safe. And it made a huge difference
in my life and my ability to calm down, my
(01:03:36):
ability to enjoy the moments. And there is no celebrity
worship in Ireland, and I think that's beautiful. Everyone treats
you as a person. They say to you, well, welcome
to Ireland. They don't say can I have an autograph?
Can I have a picture? They say you're welcome here.
Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
If the move was instigated twofold. I gather for Clay,
for Clay's wellbeing and of course by extension your wellbeing. Yes,
have you noticed a difference in your mental health?
Speaker 2 (01:04:10):
Completely? Completely? I am not as worried as I was now.
Ever since I was little, world tragedies affect me in
a way that they don't most people. And my therapist
has said to me, most people have windows in their house.
They have a screen, they have a glass pane, they
(01:04:32):
have a shade, they have curtains, and they sometimes have shutters.
But all your windows are open, so it comes right
into you and you're devastated by it. So as a kid,
when I watched the Vietnam War on TV, my father
would tell me I wasn't allowed to watch TV. Anymore,
because I would cry about the fall of Saigon and
(01:04:54):
all of the pain that we had to witness over
dinner every night, and every time there's a world crisis,
I don't do very well. And now there's a very
big world crisis, whether it's or the United States falling
into fascism, and I'm able to stay above the water.
(01:05:15):
I don't go sinking underneath. And I think a lot
of that is because I'm not in the United States.
And I have a son who's just newly married and
wants to have a family, and I know when he
has a child, I will want to be there and
be an active grandmother to that baby. And that's going
(01:05:39):
to be a challenge for me. Is it safe for
me to go back? Will I be all right and
my child be all right if I go back, even
for the summer to visit?
Speaker 1 (01:05:49):
You know, how is it when you've gone back? Have
you been back? Oh? You haven't. Not even to Broadway.
Speaker 2 (01:05:56):
No. I gone to the West End. I saw Avida.
It was fantastic. I saw a lot of shows on
the West End. But no. In fact, my daughter graduated
college and I didn't go back because the security people
said to me they didn't think it was wise because
I think Trump will use me to rile his base
(01:06:17):
to get them, you know, and I'm his nemesis in
his mind, and you know, and to them to a
lot of like a third of the country. And that's
a very difficult place to be.
Speaker 1 (01:06:33):
Very difficult. But a place that will not be difficult
for you to be will be Australia.
Speaker 2 (01:06:39):
Yes, I've heard that it's very much like Ireland. I've
heard that the people are loving and kind like Ireland,
that there's a warmth and and a pride in the
nation like Ireland. And you know, America is so big,
it's too big. It's too many people. And it's almost
like four different countries, the East, the West, the South,
(01:07:03):
you know, the North. It's very different. And I'm it's
so excited to come and I have dreamed of it
my whole life. The two places I wanted to go
was Hawaii, which I did make it too, and Australia.
And so when I got offered to do the Sydney
Opera House, I really couldn't believe it. For a couple days,
(01:07:28):
I was like, are you sure? You know? And iconic, iconic,
beyond words, and you know, in twenty thirteen, I was
booked to come here, but I couldn't go because I
didn't sell enough tickets, so it had to be canceled.
Oh yeah, So when they told when they asked me
to do this, I said, just so you know, in
twenty thirteen, I couldn't sell tickets. And you know, I
(01:07:51):
think Donald Trump has made me refamous.
Speaker 1 (01:07:53):
He's done you a favor, he really has.
Speaker 2 (01:07:56):
My brother said, if he only knew that he reignited
your career, you know, he would be miserable.
Speaker 1 (01:08:02):
That and a sexual lassignation with Miranda in it, and
just exact yeah, and just column A Columba.
Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
Right right, So you know, I mean, I'm thrilled that
their ticket sales are going well. And there's talk that
we may do other cities if we sell out in Sydney,
and that would be thrilling for me. I'm going to
be there for three weeks, and uh, you know, I'm
I'm over the moon about the whole thing. And and
my kid does not want to come. They have a
(01:08:33):
hard time on planes for that long. And my cousins, yeah,
my cousins are going to stay here with her, lovely
and take care of her and get school, and so
I'm happy about that. But it's the longest I've ever
been away from her, so that will be interesting to
see how I do, not how they do. I think
(01:08:54):
they'll be fine, but it's me that I worry about more.
Speaker 1 (01:08:56):
You know, you know, you've had such a vigorous social
life and social presence for so long, and you've navigated
public love and public few dudes and public scrutiny. How
do you want people to remember or think of Rosy O'Donnell, like,
(01:09:19):
not the headlines, but you yourself.
Speaker 2 (01:09:23):
You know, the first thing I think of is that
you know, she cared too much, you know, mostly about
children and women, and those are the people that I
always wanted to protect and take care of. And so
if I'm remembered for that, you know that that will
be a life well lived to me. I don't really,
you know, think that any awards that I've received, like,
(01:09:45):
I don't even have them. You know, I have a
lot of Emmy awards, and people are like, where are they?
They're in storage somewhere. Because I never wanted to have
this house that was full of my accolades. I wanted
it to be a house for children, like you know,
this is my house, right, It's little pigs and little
(01:10:05):
stuffed animals, and it's bright, it's colorful, like so, I
wanted it to be a family house. And so I
think if my legacy could be that she was all
about you know, family and women and kids, that would
be fine with me. But I know I'm an incendiary
soul in America that there are people who you know,
(01:10:28):
use famous people to tell their own story, and who
you like and who you love and who you load
really define who you are, not who they are.
Speaker 1 (01:10:39):
Well, it's interesting because your audience will have some of
those will have been the people that voted for Trump,
who once were Democrat voters. I think there's a tendency
around the world now for people to get voted out
as much as people get voted in. Yes, but I
never will No, but you are of appeal to those people.
(01:11:05):
There is a universality about you, as there has to
be in performs.
Speaker 2 (01:11:10):
They you know, and I'm I'm very very high on
the concept of uniting the country. That these people who
voted for him, you know, they were lied to by
the media. They were lied to by The Apprentice, which
was a fictional show reality show, and they sold him
(01:11:32):
for ten years as a successful businessman and it was
all a lie and they were lied to for a
long time by very powerful systems. And when they say
I regret it and I now see, we have to
say welcome back, come on in. You know, my sister,
my brother, come on back. We understand and it's not
(01:11:55):
your fault and we can do this together and save
our nation. And that's what I hope that. You know,
a lot of times people will write on TikTok or
something that I voted for him and I regretted it,
and people will say, well, too bad, I hope everything
bad happens. I'm like, that's not what I feel. I
feel like everyone who says that is entitled to have
(01:12:18):
the same respect and decency that we afford each other.
Speaker 1 (01:12:22):
Do you believe in God?
Speaker 2 (01:12:24):
Yes? I do? Mm hmm, you're not a kidding. I
really do. And I found that as I've gotten older,
it's it's grown my connection to to God and to
(01:12:46):
a spiritual truth. It's grown as I've gotten older, and
and it provides me with a tremendous amount of solace.
I don't believe it's a man in a in a
chair up in heaven. I believe that that's the universe.
The creation of the universe and the creation of all
of all things is God. And and I find it
(01:13:10):
in musicals. I find it in a baby's laugh. I
find it in you know, an old woman at Tesco
who was checking out the fruit, and I think that
would be my mom if she had lived, you know.
And I find that God in all these places in
my life. And it's been tremendously healing.
Speaker 1 (01:13:34):
That little motherless girl has made quite a life for
herself and quite a family.
Speaker 2 (01:13:42):
Yeah, it's hard to believe sometimes, but I'm proud of it.
Speaker 1 (01:13:47):
You should be, and your mom would be.
Speaker 2 (01:13:51):
I think so too.
Speaker 1 (01:13:53):
Rosie o'donald. Yes, thank you for joining us on No Filter.
Speaker 2 (01:13:58):
I just want to tell you this is one of
the best interviews I've ever had. It was you were
really new your stuff, and you didn't ask questions that
people typically ask me, and I'm very happy that I
did it.
Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
Well, you are just so fascinating, and you've been such
a gift to the culture and continue to be, and
you share of yourself so generously that it would be
remiss of me to not extend the same to you.
Speaker 2 (01:14:31):
Well, thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:14:32):
So much. It's an honor to have you on No
Filter and to have you with our listeners, and it's
very interesting to watch you now become the gardener as
well as the flower exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:14:46):
I hope I get to meet you when I'm there.
I hope so too, And thank you so much for
having me.
Speaker 1 (01:14:52):
May the what is it the road rise to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back. The Irish blessing,
totally true.
Speaker 2 (01:15:01):
I thank you for that, and I hope that's the
same for you.
Speaker 1 (01:15:08):
I'll tell you what. When they talk about breaking the
mold when they made certain people, they certainly break the
mold when they made Rosio o'donnal. This has been a
conversation that only miss o'donald could give us. It's insightful
and bold and entirely unforgettable and so honest. And she
allows herself such rawness and to go to places where
(01:15:32):
most people would kind of close up like a clamshell.
Few people have lived as loudly, as honestly, or as
unapologetically as Rosio o'donnal. And from her fearless beginnings as
a funny popular kid carrying private pain to breaking barriers
on television and in film, to navigating public feuds and
(01:15:55):
life under intense scrutiny. Rosie has done it all on
her own terms. But she also is capable, which some
people are not, of self reflection. She shares the stories
that made her laugh, the moments that broke her heart,
the lessons that have guided her as a mother, an activist,
and a woman unafraid to speak her mind. I can't
(01:16:18):
wait to catch up face to face when she's here.
Thank you for listening to No Filter. The executive producer
of No Filter is Nama Brown, The senior producer is
Bree Player. Audio production is by Jacob Brown, Video editing
is by Josh Green and this episode was recorded at
Session in Progress Studios. I am your host, Kate Langbrook.
(01:16:42):
Thank you so much for listening.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.