![\"Rosie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/4971992_12_articleinline_Common_Knowledge_2025_Rosie_ODonnell_OnStage_Olympia_3_PhotoBy_Lee_Byrne.jp.jpeg\" "\\"Rosie")
Rosie O’Donnell: \u201cI got here and I was surrounded by this Irish culture that I grew up heavily invested in.\u201d<\/p>\nIf Irishness\u00a0was measured by people\u2019s ability to talk about the weather, Rosie O\u2019Donnell may well deserve some sheep-grazing rights. Actress, activist, advocate, comedian \u2014 it\u2019s hard to know where to begin with someone whose life has been so public for so long. So I take the soft approach. I choose rain.<\/p>\n
I tell her I\u2019m in the West, where the wet arrives like a nosy neighbour. Rosie is in Dublin. She laughs when I tell her that maybe, for once, things are a little drier out West than they are up East. \u201cIt\u2019s funny,\u201d she says. \u201cEveryone warned me about the weather, but you know what? I quite like it.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Donnell has been in Ireland for just over a year now. She moved here in protest at Donald Trump\u2019s America \u2014 a decision that made headlines on both sides of the Atlantic, not least because of her long-running, famously personal feud with the most divisive American president in living memory.<\/p>\n
Last year, he threatened to revoke her American citizenship. In March, she\u2019ll bring her show to Cork Opera House, extending her return to live comedy after a 10-year break.<\/p>\n
But before we get to Cork, or comedy, or Trump, we circle back to the rain. \u201cThe thing about the weather here,\u201d she says, \u201cis that even when it\u2019s cloudy, it\u2019s still not dark grey. The sky is like a white colour. In New York, when it\u2019s cloudy this time of year, it\u2019s so grey \u2014 and it\u2019s very, very depressing.\u201d In Ireland, she says, even the bad weather feels different. \u201cI find that even when it\u2019s raining, the light is always there.\u201d<\/p>\n
For all the political drama that framed her move, O\u2019Donnell speaks about Ireland less like a celebrity in exile and more like a person who has landed somewhere that fits. She has been back to the United States recently \u2014 briefly, and quietly \u2014 to visit her older children. She admits she was anxious before she travelled.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was definitely nervous,\u201d she says. \u201cI wondered about what they were doing with people, looking at their Instagram and their TikTok.\u201d She laughs, but there\u2019s a hard edge to it. \u201cI thought, well, if they look at mine, I\u2019m not getting in.\u201d Normally, she says, she\u2019d go to Broadway, to restaurants to eat with friends. This time she didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust because things are so volatile,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
In America, she describes a tension that exists alongside denial \u2014 crisis and spectacle in the same breath.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re there, and you\u2019re watching \u2026 ICE killed someone else, and this story, and that story. And yet then, suddenly everything is about the Golden Globes: \u2018Ladies and gentlemen, here is so-and-so dressed in a $155m dress.\u2019\u201d The disparity is what unnerves her.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s sort of like \u2026 a disconnect between the perceived reality and the reality that\u2019s actually happening,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s like you\u2019re living there in both ways.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rosie O’Donnell: \u201cI got here and I was surrounded by this Irish culture that I grew up heavily invested in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since moving to Ireland, she\u2019s stopped watching American news. \u201cIn America you can\u2019t get away from the news,\u201d she says. \u201cSo I felt very bombarded by all of the trouble that\u2019s happening.\u201d O\u2019Donnell didn\u2019t announce her move in advance. \u201cWe just kind of showed up,\u201d she says. \u201cWe just sorted all our papers in order and came.\u201d<\/p>\n
She arrived without work lined up, without a plan. \u201cWhen I got here, I didn\u2019t know what I was going to do,\u201d she says. \u201cI thought, well, I\u2019ve got to be working on something while my daughter\u2019s at school. I can\u2019t just sit home and do nothing.\u201d So she started writing.<\/p>\n
That writing became the show she\u2019s now touring: A one-woman piece that threads together comedy, grief, motherhood, and the mistakes you only fully understand once your children are grown. \u201cIt\u2019s funny,\u201d she says, \u201cbecause for many years I\u2019ve been trying to write one about my mother, and my mother\u2019s death, and how that affected my being the mother of five as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her mother died when Rosie was a child \u2014 a loss she has spoken about for decades, and one that still sits close to the centre of her. In Ireland, she says, something in her settled. \u201cNow that I\u2019m going to be 64,\u201d she says, \u201cI got here and I was surrounded by this Irish culture that I grew up heavily invested in.\u201d<\/p>\n
She\u2019s Irish-American by heritage \u2014 \u201c100% Irish, according to 23andMe,\u201d she says \u2014 and her family\u2019s identity was always steeped in it. Being here, she didn\u2019t expect to feel so at home. After her mother\u2019s death, her father brought the family back to Ireland for a time, visiting relatives.<\/p>\n
It was the only meaningful stretch she\u2019d spent here \u2014 and yet decades later the sense of recognition returned. \u201cIt was very strange to feel so at home in a new country,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I do.\u201d<\/p>\n
The decision to leave the US wasn\u2019t framed as an adventure. O\u2019Donnell speaks about it as a necessity. She had read Project 2025, the hard-right policy blueprint associated with a second Trump presidency, and she says what she saw there made the decision for her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI read what their plans were \u2014 most of which have been implemented already,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd it was so terrifying \u2026 so I thought, I don\u2019t have a choice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her daughter, she says, is autistic, non-binary, and 12 years old. \u201cI didn\u2019t have a choice but to move and to take my child with me,\u201d she says. She doesn\u2019t hide her privilege. She moved, she says, because she could afford to. But when she talks about what the move has changed, she becomes most emphatic about one thing: school.<\/p>\n
In America, she says, autistic children are often separated out of the mainstream system. There are private schools, specialist schools, and in her case, an LA school for neurodivergent children that cost $85,000 a year.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow what do you do,\u201d she asks, \u201cif you\u2019re not a rich famous person and you have an autistic child or two? What does one do in America?\u201d In Ireland, she says, she was shocked by what she found. \u201cWhen I was looking for a school here, I was shocked to find a school that is a public school, which costs me nothing but hot lunch fees.\u201d<\/p>\n
Compared to $85,000, it felt unreal. And, crucially, her daughter is thriving. \u201cShe\u2019s thriving in it,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not only autistic kids.\u201d This matters, she explains, because \u201cthe world is not just going to be filled with people like her.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe world is full of all kinds of people,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd they have to figure out how to deal with [each other] \u2026 as part of being alive.\u201d Her voice softens when she talks about her daughter\u2019s response to the move.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe made me promise that we wouldn\u2019t go back until she\u2019s done with high school here,\u201d O\u2019Donnell says. \u201cAnd I promised her that.\u201d If her daughter has found something in Ireland that feels safer, O\u2019Donnell has too.<\/p>\n
\n What I love about Ireland is there\u2019s no celebrity culture of any kind. And I love it\n <\/p>\n
She gives\u00a0me a small, vivid scene. She and her daughter go to a local pub once a week for a burger. In the summer they sit outside in the beer garden. Her daughter plays with other children and the parents treat Rosie like any other parent at the next table. After a couple of hours, as everyone was leaving, the other parents finally said something. \u201cBy the way,\u201d they told her, \u201cwe\u2019re big fans.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Donnell was struck by the fact they\u2019d waited. \u201cI said, \u2018You didn\u2019t feel the need to bring it up while our children were playing?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
And they said: \u201cThat\u2019s not the most important thing.\u201d When people do stop me, it\u2019s not intrusive,\u201d she adds. \u201cThey\u2019re always apologising. They always say, \u2018I don\u2019t mean to bother you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Then she laughs. \u201cIf you knew the difference between living in America and being a famous person and living in Ireland, you would know there\u2019s nothing anyone in Ireland can do that could bother me \u2014 comparatively.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Cork show is rooted in parenting \u2014 not in the sentimental \u201caren\u2019t kids wonderful\u201d sense, but in the darker, funnier reality of trying to raise children while carrying your own history. When I ask about breaking cycles \u2014 about over-correcting \u2014 she answers instantly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t come from an \u2018I love you\u2019 family,\u201d she says. \u201cNo one in my family ever said \u2018I love you\u2019 to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
She had never heard the phrase until she was about six years old and overheard it in a neighbour\u2019s house.<\/p>\n
\u201cI heard the neighbour saying goodbye to the daughter,\u201d she says. \u201c\u2018Honey, I love you. I\u2019ll see you at dinner.\u2019 And I was like \u2026 \u2018I love you?\u2019 What the hell?\u201d<\/p>\n
So she overdid it with her own children, trying to create the childhood she wished she\u2019d had. But she admits to having clarity now \u2014 the hindsight of a parent whose children are adults \u2014 to see the flaw in that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat fantasy is not necessarily what an actual child needs. I made the road too smooth in front of them,\u201d she says. \u201cTrying to redo the childhood that I had.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know where life can take us,\u201d she adds, \u201cthrough pain, and through love. And both of those things are connected. We can\u2019t have one without the other.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Donnell\u2019s activism isn\u2019t a phase or a branding exercise. It has been consistent for decades \u2014 from LGBTQ+ rights to anti-war activism, from gun control to Palestine. When I ask her about the cost of speaking out, she frames it in historical terms. \u201cYou\u2019re worried about the McCarthy era. Which is kind of happening now …<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people that I\u2019m friends with who I admire so much, who use their voice to stand up for injustice wherever they see it \u2014 they\u2019re the people that I respect the most,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\n If you\u2019re privileged enough to have a voice, have access to a microphone, you\u2019d better use it to help as many people as you can, that\u2019s your responsibility.\n <\/p>\n
Why don\u2019t more people speak up?<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are afraid,\u201d she says. \u201cThey\u2019re afraid of what\u2019s going to happen to them.\u201d She names Mark Ruffalo as someone she admires. \u201cHe inspires me,\u201d she says. \u201cHe reminds me we need to keep going, keep pushing back.\u201d<\/p>\n
And she pushes back against the idea that public figures should stay in their lane.<\/p>\n
![\"Rosie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/4971995_12_articleinline_Common_Knowledge_2025_Rosie_ODonnell_HeadshotPortrait4_PhotoBy_Kip_Carroll..jpeg\" "\\"Rosie")
Rosie O’Donnell: \u201cIf you\u2019re privileged enough to have a voice, have access to a microphone, you\u2019d better use it to help as many people as you can,\u201d<\/p>\n
Her Irish citizenship process, she says, should be completed soon. \u201cWe\u2019ve been here a little over a year, so it should be coming in the next few months for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t wait for it,\u201d she adds. Her grandparents were from here. Her father\u2019s family retained a deep Irish identity even in America. For her, the passport feels like formal recognition of something she has carried all her life.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel a connection to this country in a deep and meaningful way,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I will be thrilled to have an Irish passport.\u201d As we finish, she tells me she\u2019s used to the questions about Trump \u2014 the American circus that follows her no matter where she lives now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m used to it,\u201d she says. But she doesn\u2019t sound defeated. She sounds steadier. Ireland hasn\u2019t removed the chaos of the world. It has simply put an ocean between her and the daily bombardment of it. It has given her daughter a school where she belongs. It has given her, unexpectedly, a sense of home.<\/p>\n
Even the rain hits different. Because even when it\u2019s bad, she says, it doesn\u2019t feel so dark.<\/p>\n