Rosie O’Donnell had t-shirts made at the height of her feud with Ellen DeGeneres
Ellen DeGeneres apparently texted Rosie O'Donnell to apologize, but it might have been too little, too late
Aux News Ellen DeGeneres
Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O’Donnell have one of the longest-standing “celebsian” feuds—one that O’Donnell apparently commemorated with novelty t-shirts. The pair were apparently close friends, and O’Donnell even helped with DeGeneres’ public coming out. “It was a good relationship. We were friends. We supported each other. Which is why when she came on my show, I said, ‘Let me not have you standing there by yourself. Let’s get a joke in there,’” O’Donnell recalls in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “It became a big thing.”
The media being what it was in the ’90s (and still is, given that the situation is still being discussed today) “everybody was asking me, ‘What do you think about Ellen?’ It became a strange, ‘There can’t be two lesbians in this town,’ kind of a thing,” O’Donnell says. “Then we each had success and went separate ways.”
“She texted me a few weeks ago checking in, seeing how I’m doing, and I asked her how she’s surviving not being on TV,” the A League Of Our Own star revealed. “It’s a big transition. But we’ve had our weirdness in our relationship. I don’t know if it’s jealousy, competition or the fact that she said a mean thing about me once that really hurt my feelings.”
O’Donnell has spoken on multiple occasions about their falling out, which occurred after DeGeneres said “I don’t know Rosie. We’re not friends” during an appearance on Larry King Live. DeGeneres apparently texted to say “I’m really sorry and I don’t remember that” after seeing O’Donnell talk about it on Watch What Happens Live.
“I remembered it so well, I had T-shirts printed and I gave them to my staff that said ‘I don’t know Rosie. We’re not friends,’” O’Donnell says now. “I have a picture of her holding [my then-infant son] Parker. I know her mother. I could identify her brother without her in the room. I knew her for so many years. It just felt like I don’t trust this person to be in my world.”
Clearly, the text message did not entirely smooth over the hard feelings. “It would never occur to me to say ‘I don’t know her’ about somebody whose babies I held when they were born. It wouldn’t be in my lexicon of choices to ever say,” she tells THR. “When she was in a perplexing situation and people were saying things about her, I said, ‘Let me stand next to you and say that I’m Lebanese, too.’ When it was a downward media time for me, she didn’t do anything.”
And that’s part of the reason O’Donnell never appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. “She used the same staff from my show—Jim Paratore, Andy Lassner. So that was odd. It was very similar to my show,” she says. “And then I asked to go on because of something I was promoting, and she said no. And I remember going, ‘Seriously?’ After she said no that one time, whenever they would ask [me to appear] on the show, I would say no.” Feud status: still on, baby.
44 Comments
Hollywood friendships sounds exhausting, in a peculiarly transactional way.
Yeah, let’s pretend that doesn’t apply to most friendships in most industries in general and only in Hollywood do people have hurt feelings over stupid shit.
That’s why I don’t have work friends. Friends are for outside work, colleagues are for at work.
To me there’s ‘work socializing’ and ‘personal socializing.’ I don’t really expect anything from either group — never transactional — but I do keep them separate.Sometimes work friends become real friends, but that takes years.
I try to avoid ‘work socializing’ at all.
Perfectly valid move. I’ve found it useful in dealing with some of my coworkers, who, while being brilliant, often have raging personality disorders.Seeing them ‘au naturel’ helps me understand them.
I find that coworkers like to continue talking about work when we’re not at work, which is the absolute last thing I want to be doing when I’m not at work. I get what you’re saying about understanding why those kind of people are so fucked up though.
I do hang with a couple guys that I used to work with but only started that once they weren’t coworkers anymore.
Yeah, I can see how talking about work outside of work can feel jarring. I don’t mind too much, probably because my job is all-consuming.Separating friend groups under those circumstances becomes especially important, though. Can’t ‘cross the streams.’ That’s true of my regular friend groups, but especially important when a random person sitting in wouldn’t be able to follow any of the conversations taking place.
Yeah I’ve been trying to get away from my job being all consuming over the past few years. I was on call 24/7/365 for no extra pay for years and I’m tired of that bullshit so I just stopped doing it.Too true!
Cheers to work-life balance!
Indeed!
It doesn’t sound like they were work friends, as in peers sharing an employer. They’re comedians who happened to be friends, until they weren’t because of an interview.They then started icing each other out of appearances on their respective shows, and are still being asked about it in interviews — as part of their jobs.That seems both peculiar and exhausting to me. Can’t speak for many ‘industries,’ but that doesn’t reflect mine.
Eh, I’ve had ups and downs in my friendships and haven’t always loved my co-workers, sure, but I’ve never bought and made my underlings wear t-shirts commemorating my petty feud with someone, nor do I have TV shows that I can exclude them from appearing on. “Exhausting in a peculiarly transactional way” sounds fair.
“celebsian”lol Celesbian is so much better an actually contains “lesbian”
‘Let me stand next to you and say that I’m Lebanese, too.’
If I recall correctly, just before Ellen came out on her sitcom, she guested on Rosie’s talk show, and it was a whole bit. Where they both confessed to being “Lebanese”.
That’s what I thought it was until I looked again and started saying it to myself. I’m glad I have my own office.
Agreed. A real portmantoops there.
This is a website that refered to a German dictator as “Hilter”. It’s entirely possible they were aiming at your neologism but missed.
Wasn’t he a National Bocialist?
He was certainly a silly bunt.
I thought he had nice legs.
They were almost certainly attempting to combine “celebrity” and “lesbian,” but, you know, AV Club writers don’t do words too good.
The editors here are worse then HilterNote: it took me several seconds to type this because even my iPhone was like “you are spelling that wrong”
i love that they can’t even get spelling errors right when the default spell-check INSISTS on spelling it the right way. Like, they literally had to overrule the computer AI that told them multiple times THIS IS WRONG.
anyone can amke a mistake!
Weird, I’m staying at a Hilter Hotel right now. Very few Kosher options for room service.
Where can I get one of these shirts?
They’re available for sale in the Fourth Circle of Hell.
I haven’t read Dante in a while, but is that the circle for hipsters to atone for their “ironic” sartorial sins?
Yep. It’s looks exactly like a Wes Anderson film and all the demons look like Bill Murray but act like Bill Murray in real life and treat you like shit
*shudder*
The internet.
We supported each other. Which is why when she came on my show, I said, ‘Let me not have you standing there by yourself.’The media being what it was in the ’90s (and still is, given that the situation is still being discussed today) “everybody was asking me, ‘What do you think about Ellen?’ It became a strange, ‘There can’t be two lesbians in this town,’ kind of a thing,” O’Donnell says.This seems kind of like a weird rewriting of the past to me, because the timeline doesn’t really match up. Ellen came out in 1997, and Rosie O’Donnell didn’t come out publicly until 2002. So there wouldn’t have been media asking Rosie about her experience as lesbian, too, would there? It also seems a little disingenuous for Rosie to be saying that Ellen had her on the show as a way to show solidarity/make Ellen feel a lot less alone, when Rosie was still doing her fake “I’m so hot for Tom Cruise/see I’m totally straight” act all over daytime TV. I could see how Ellen might walk away from that feeling like she hadn’t been totally supported because she knew Rosie was gay and that Rosie was letting her take the career hit alone rather than actually standing alongside her. Basically, Ellen stood up to live her authentic life and lost her career. Rosie stayed in the closet and kept her very lucrative show. Honestly, both Rosie and Ellen sound like exhausting people to know and hard people to get to know well/be friends with. I’m not surprise that, by Rosie’s own words, they both “had success and went their separate ways.” Sometimes that happens to friendships even in the best of circumstances—and Hollywood doesn’t exactly breed long-lasting friendships. There are tons of people who I was friendly/friends with years ago who, if I were asked about them now, I would say I don’t know them/am not friends with them. Because I’m not.
Ellen was a guest on Rosie’s show, and they did a really dumb bit about how they were both coming out as being “Lebanese”. Right before Ellen came out on her sitcom.
Could Ellen’s quote have happened during Rosie’s Truther phase?Cause I’d be noping the fuck out of that conversation at all costs too.
Do you erase all the people you know for believing in a silly conspiracy theory in their repertoire? Must be a lonely existence.
I always see these comments and I’m so confused. Do these people think that black smiths just put steel in fire because it looked cool when it glowed red hot?
You just briefly forgot about a decades-long campaign to demonize education, intellectual curiosity, and doing any cursory research to back up your “this sounds vaguely right to me so I’ll die on this hill and ignore any new facts from this point on” feeling.
I wonder if any of these “Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams” people have changed their mind after watched several seasons of Forged in Fire?“Well if that man’s knife can break because he heated it up to hot maybe steel beams holding up millions of tons of a sky scraper might break if a jet fuel fire cooked them for a while”
Bold of you to assume they think.
And in this case, the fire didn’t even have to melt steel, just weaken it.And how do they explain the fireproofing that got knocked off. Why would every fire code everywhere require fireproofing on beams in that situation if fire didn’t affect them.
Steel only glows red when the battery is low. That’s basic science.
Tals a about a no-win situation, or more to the point a no-talent situation. Never liked either of them and if they want o have a knockdown dragout fight, I’ll be happy.