{"id":136421,"date":"2025-09-11T15:19:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T15:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/136421\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T15:19:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T15:19:09","slug":"rosie-odonnell-couldnt-believe-ellen-degeneres-friendship-fallout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/136421\/","title":{"rendered":"Rosie O’Donnell ‘couldn’t believe’ Ellen DeGeneres friendship fallout"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rosie O’Donnell <\/a>is opening up about the end of her friendship with Ellen DeGeneres<\/a> over 20 years ago.\n<\/p>\n

O’Donnell appeared on the No Filter<\/a> podcast and told host Kate Langbroek about her ongoing issues with DeGeneres. In particular, she referenced the Ellen star’s 2004 interview on Larry King Live, during which the former sitcom actress said<\/a> she was “not really friends” with O’Donnell.\n<\/p>\n

“That was, like, one of the most painful things that ever happened to me in show business, in my life,” the former cohost of The View said.\n<\/p>\n

O’Donnell continued, “I couldn’t believe it. I have photos of her holding my newborn babies. I knew her for 30 years.”\n<\/p>\n

The former Rosie O’Donnell Show host \u2014 who came out as gay in 2002 \u2014 said that she “felt betrayed” because she had supported DeGeneres when she appeared on her talk show in 1996, a few months before she and her character on Ellen came out.\n<\/p>\n

“She came on my show, and I felt strongly that I didn’t want to leave her out there alone,” O’Donnell recalled. “That I could not, as a gay person, act as though I was not the same as her. So, we talked before in the dressing room and she said she was going to say that her character was going to become Lebanese<\/a>. 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 Kasem. Maybe I’m Lebanese.'”\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

O’Donnell added: “And everyone who was gay at home got it … Because I couldn’t leave her out there alone. I couldn’t do it. So we had this, you know, really sort of decoded, coded interaction that anyone who was gay knew, but, you know, the public didn’t really pick up on it.”\n<\/p>\n

The A League of Their Own star also discussed how she was never asked to be on<\/a> DeGeneres’ talk show, which was confusing to her because they had been friends \u2014 not to mention that crew members from the Rosie O’Donnell Show had also later worked on DeGeneres’ daytime program.\n<\/p>\n

“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,” O’Donnell said. “And instead of deciding to stand next to me and hold my hand, which is what I did to her, she did the opposite.”\n<\/p>\n

Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O’Donnell on ‘The Rosie O’Donnell Show’ in 1996.<\/p>\n

The Rosie O’Donnell Show<\/p>\n

Sign up for\u00a0Entertainment Weekly<\/a>‘s free daily newsletter<\/a>\u00a0to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.\n<\/p>\n

No Filter host Langbroek pointed out that the crew had a markedly different experience on DeGeneres’ show compared to O’Donnell’s. This, Langbroek noted, led to<\/a> the eventual demise of The Ellen DeGeneres Show.\n<\/p>\n

“With my staff here and in my life and in my house, I create a family and I don’t think that she’s similar to me in that way,” O’Donnell said.\n<\/p>\n

O’Donnell later shared that DeGeneres never explained why she claimed not to be her friend. However, she said DeGeneres has written to her asking why she still talks about their falling-out.\n<\/p>\n

“I think in her mind she thinks I keep rehashing it for pleasure,” O’Donnell said. “I don’t rehash it for pleasure. I rehash it because our careers have taken sort of parallel interwoven paths. We’re 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.”\n<\/p>\n

Listen to the full episode of No Filter with Rosie O’Donnell below.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rosie O’Donnell is opening up about the end of her friendship with Ellen DeGeneres over 20 years ago.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-136421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}