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In January, a week before Donald Trump was to be inaugurated as President of the United States once again, Rosie O’Donnell made the decision to leave her native New York and relocate to Dublin. It was more than a political statement for the 63-year-old, who hadn’t even travelled much outside of the States in her lifetime. It was a crucial move in protecting her mental health.
“I didn’t tell any of my family and friends that I was thinking about leaving the US because they wouldn’t believe I’d go through with it,” says O’Donnell over Zoom. “They’d be like: ‘Oh, you wouldn’t go, Rosie’, and I even surprised myself that I did.”
The Emmy- and Tony-winning former talk-show host, actor and comedian will tour Australia for the first time in October with her Edinburgh Fringe Festival hit show, Common Knowledge. She admits she tried to tour Australia before, back in 2013, but the promoter called to say ticket sales were low, and the show was off. “I was disappointed, but I did try,” she says.
The tell-all show takes audiences through moments that defined her life – from the loss of her mother, Roseann, who was buried on Rosie’s 11th birthday, to the way fame changed her life 30 years ago after she became best friends with Madonna when filming A League of Their Own together. O’Donnell, who left her adopted children behind in the US when she moved to Ireland (they’re all aged between 22 and 29 now), also discusses the challenges of raising her autistic non-binary teenager Clay (born Dakota) in a new country.
“I had to make a stage show that was personal and poignant,” says O’Donnell of her show, Common Knowledge.Credit: Steve Ullathorne
O’Donnell hadn’t even heard of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival when she was asked to craft a show for it. She was ready to do a version of a Hulu documentary she had filmed last year called Unleashing Hope: The Power of Service Dogs for Autism where she discusses raising Clay, but decided the show’s scope needed expanding.
“It felt irrelevant to be talking about this given what I had just experienced leaving my country, democracy being threatened and fascism thriving,” O’Donnell says.
“That’s when I realised [I] had to include my origin story in my show, to introduce myself to these new audiences. In America, I have a well-known public profile, but it’s not the same in other nations. I had to make a stage show that was personal and poignant. I got myself a director and the response has been great.”
O’Donnell has swapped feeling on edge in Manhattan for a calmer way of being. She has two maternal cousins she visits by train who live three hours away in Northern Ireland, while her child has made great friends (O’Donnell even has her own trio of mums she hangs with). “I wouldn’t let my autistic child walk to school in Manhattan, but I do let them go halfway here,” she says.
O’Donnell (far right) with Lori Petty, Tom Hanks and Geena Davis in A League of Their Own.Credit: Sony
As she walks around the streets of Dublin, she’s reminded of her paternal and maternal roots. She went back to Ireland as a child with her father and siblings after her mum died in 1973 for a summer, and again to film Who Do You Think You Are? with her brother, Ed, in 2011.
“I had a maternal calling I needed to honour this time,” she says. “I see little girls on the street here who sometimes remind [me] of when I was a kid their age – with that Irish face. It takes me back to being 10.
“And then I see older women at Tesco looking at the fruit and think, had my mum lived, that would be her today.
“Being here has brought up a lot of feelings of family and identity and who are you. And when you are without the country you grew up in and the one that defined you, it’s been very freeing. It feels like I felt before I was famous.”
‘When he won, I just knew I had to get out.’
Rosie O’Donnell on Donald Trump
For someone who began their comedy career on Star Search in 1984, O’Donnell says she always knew she’d be a performer. In a high school graduation yearbook, she wrote that she wanted to be on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show, which he hosted from 1962 to 1992.
Her first major film role in the 1992 movie, A League of Their Own, saw her befriend Madonna, and the pair are still close today. “I played Madonna’s best friend and got a close-up view of super stardom when I made that movie with her,” she recalls.
“To be that close to someone who was the most famous woman in the world at the time gave me an interesting perspective to see the downside of it. We’d go out in public and people would tell her to her face that they preferred her as a blonde and to change her black hair. There’s a constant incoming of opinions, and it’s hard to talk about it in America because everyone upholds celebrity status as the goal you should want.”
O’Donnell winning the Emmy for best talk show host in 1999, her third consecutive win.Credit: AP
She got a taste of fame when she joined the popular day-time US talk show, The View, between 2006 and 2007, but it wasn’t without controversy. At the time, she criticised Donald Trump for holding a press conference to reinstate Miss USA Tara Conner, who had violated pageant guidelines, accusing Trump of using her scandal to “generate publicity for the Miss USA Pageant” – to which he allegedly owned the rights – by announcing he was giving her a second chance.
It’s been a slinging match ever since. O’Donnell has firmly called him out on everything from ICE raids to the Epstein drama. He has threatened to revoke her US citizenship.
“I never thought he would win the presidency again. I had read Project 2025, and if anyone had read that properly, they would see what he had in store for America,” O’Donnell says. “When he won, I just knew I had to get out. I also didn’t want to deal with people stopping me at the supermarket to say, ‘Hey Rosie, Trump won’.”
Beaming into the living rooms of everyday Americans five hours a week took its toll on her, too. After The View, she hosted her own namesake daytime TV talk show.
“Once I became a celebrity, it started to impact not just my life, but that of my children. Doing daytime TV was different to doing movies,” she says of having to weigh in on topics from the Iraq war to female rights daily.
It’s why Ireland feels like a breath of fresh air to her. “I love how Ireland is not a celebrity-focused country – it’s so freeing,” she smiles. “In the United States, celebrities have unbridled attention and an absurdist placement. They get to break rules all the time, whereas here they don’t even stop me for an autograph.”
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Midway through our interview, O’Donnell holds up a Lego work she’s constructing: it’s bright red blocks that spell out the word “love”. There are a few glitches, but she’s not prepared to dismantle the work and start again. For now, it’s a perfect way to switch off from the news cycle. She’s also taken to watercolour painting, exploring other ways to stay Zen, and has posted a few reels to YouTube.
“Sometimes the world can feel too overwhelming, and world crises throw me over the edge. I have to stop myself from scrolling. You become what you ingest, that’s why it’s important to monitor what you let in,” she says.
“My therapist once said to me, most people have a glass window with a pane, a screen, a shade, a curtain and shutters, but your windows, Rosie, are all open and everything gets in. I have learnt to do that when I need to take care of myself. It’s the reason I left America, so I wouldn’t have to be in the midst of the downfall of my country. Taking care of myself and my child is my top priority.”
If she could have her time again, O’Donnell would want to come back as a game show host. “When I was hosting my own TV show, my contract had a clause in it which said if Bob Barker [host of The Price Is Right] retired and I was offered the role, I would be able to leave my own show to do it. They did interview me and Drew Carey, but they chose him. I love what he has done, but I would love to give away prizes and do an hour of happiness like that,” she says.
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It takes her back to a childhood feeling of winning – even when the days felt dark after losing her mother. “My brother, Ed, and I went to a local radio station to pick up a prize he won,” she says. “It was a T-shirt for a band called Bread, and we got their album, too. It made us feel so lucky and happy, and all the sadness of Mum dying slipped away for a brief moment of happy.”
In her quiet corner of the world, and on the other side of menopause after 15 years of symptoms (“Menopause is a gift because with it comes wisdom,” she says), she feels she’s found her happy place.
“You don’t worry what other people think about you, you only worry about yourself,” she says. “The first 50 years of your life you spend collecting things, and the last part you start shedding stories that you held on that defined you: the anger of what you didn’t get, or the pain of what wasn’t to be. Now I am happier with my life more than ever, and the shedding feels good.”
Rosie O’Donnell will perform at the Sydney Opera House on October 9 and at Melbourne’s Hamer Hall on October 19.