Star reveals why she doesn’t speak to Ellen

Author: Editors Desk Source: News Corp Australia Network:

September 17, 2022 at 06:39

Comedian Rosie O’Donnell has revealed she “never got over” a comment Ellen DeGeneres made about her, saying it “hurt my feelings.”

Rosie O’Donnell said “a weird thing” led her never to appear on Ellen DeGeneres’ former talk show.

The 60-year-old US comedian helped pave the way for DeGeneres, now 64, and her now-cancelled talk show series, but explained on Watch What Happens Live on Friday that the Finding Nemo voice actress ended up snubbing her.

“We had a little bit of a weird thing,” O’Donnell told host Andy Cohen.

“After my show [The Rosie O’Donnell Show] went off the air and hers was coming on the air, [TV host] Larry King was on with Ellen and he said, ‘Whatever happened to Rosie O’Donnell? Her show went down the tubes. She came out as a lesbian and disappeared!’

“And Ellen said, and I’m quoting, ‘I don’t know Rosie. We’re not friends.’”

US comedian Rosie O'Donnell has revealed why she doesn’t speak to Ellen. Picture: Angela Weiss / AFP

Ellen’s comments shocked O’Donnell, who thought the duo were friends. Picture: FREDERIC J. BROWN / AFP

O’Donnell, whose successful talk show ran from 1996 to 2002, admitted she “never really got over” DeGeneres’ public comments.

“I was in bed with [ex-wife] Kelli [Carpenter], and I said, ‘Did I just hear that or was that a hallucination, auditory voice in my [head]?’” O’Donnell said, shocked.

“It hurt my feelings, like a baby, and I never really got over it.”

Ellen appeared on Rosie's show when it aired in the late '90s and early 2000s.

O’Donnell also revealed she was eventually asked to appear on DeGeneres’ show “at the end” of its almost two-decade run in May this year.

Reluctant, the actress asked DeGeneres’ producers if she could bring someone with her so it would be “a little less awkward,” but DeGeneres’ staff “didn’t want to do that,” so O’Donnell declined.

Closing the conversation, O’Donnell told Cohen, “I wish her all good things in her life and that she should be well, so there you go.”

Amid a disastrous PR storm that engulfed DeGeneres in 2020, with allegations she was “mean” and the culture at her long-running show was toxic, at the time, O’Donnell admitted she felt sorry for her.

“You can’t fake your essence,” O’Donnell told Busy Phillips on her podcast Busy Philipps Is Doing Her Best in August 2020.

“That’s why I have compassion for Ellen, right? I have compassion, even though, you know, I hear the stories and I understand. I think she has some social awkwardness.”

This story originally appeared on New York Post and was reproduced with permission