She called me about ten years after we did League of their own, So, you know, twenty years ago, twenty five years ago, mame and she said to me, Rosie, can you play soccer? I said, what can you play soccer? I don't know. I never It wasn't my sport truthfully, too much running. I didn't like it. I had to sit. But you know, yeah, I know how to play soccer. Why She's like, well, there's a team in Mexico. Great story. You could be the lady. I go, I'm Rosie o'donnald.
I'm going to be the Mexican woman on the soccer coach. But she was always trying to like get everybody back together and do it again. And you know, do you play soccer? Hi? This is Rosie o'donnald and I have a cold.
Soar friends, Welcome to this week's episode of Off the Beat. I am, as always, your humble host, Brian Baumgartner. Today's guest, Well, she needs no introduction. I'm going to give one anyways, but I just want you to know I am so excited to welcome the legendary Rosie O'Donnell to the podcast. Honestly, it would be much easier for me to tell you what Rosie hasn't done in the entertainment business than to list her her countless huge projects from the last what
four decades. I mean, maybe you know Rosie from some of the tiny movies she's done, you know, a League of their own, Sleepless in Seattle, Or perhaps you're more familiar with her stand up career, or from her years doing the iconic Rosie O'Donnell show. The Queen of Nice is also the Queen of candid. To be clear, She's also responsible for some of the biggest philanthropic efforts in the history of show business and was continues to be
groundbreaking for the LGBTQ plus community around the world. We'll hear a lot about that and the impact she has made in that community. Look, she's a legend for a reason. You might even say that she's in a league of her own. Okay, not the best, but I'm trying. This is a great conversation. There is so much insider info, and if you know anything about Rosie, you should not be surprised that she was able to be completely candid, moving, and hilarious all at once. So I'm not going to
make you wait any longer. Here she is Rosie O'Donnell, Bubble and squeak.
I love it, Bubble and Squeakana, Bubble and Squeaker. Cook get every mo.
Lift over from the Nubyo.
Hi, Rosie, how are you?
I'm good.
I'm so happy to be doing this.
Well, I'm so happy that you're here. It's it's a little bit of a different environment than Watch What Happens Live. The last time I saw.
You, I know, that was so fun. And I remember I said to Laurie, I love that guy. We should hang out with him. So this is our first hang. Consider this our first hang.
This will be our first of many, I hope.
Yeah, me too.
Congratulations on the new podcast. We're going to talk about that in a little bit, but I wanted to start back by the way I told you this when I'm I'm a huge fan of yours. You're career is well, I mean, it's unbelievable and inspiring. I want to get into a little bit. When did you first begin to have feelings of interest in performing? When you were a kid?
Pre kindergarten pre kindergarten. Yes, in kindergarten, everybody would do show and tell and they would bring in a toy and I would go and now I'd like to do something from Guys and Dolls, and I would belt out a Broadway show song that my mother would listen to the original cast recordings all the time. So I knew every Broadway show and I wanted to be a performer. I wanted to be Barbara streisand I want to be Bette Midler. Now the fact that I really couldn't sing
or dance didn't really, you know, dissuade me. I was still like, gung ho, let's do this. And the goal for me was never Hollywood. It was always Broadway, because you know, Hollywood was some imaginary illusion that I mean, I had been on a plane and you know, I didn't know how to get there, But Broadway I knew how to get there, and I knew how to watch sweaty people come out of that stage door that I just saw on stage, and I'm like, this is the
destination Broadway. So that's always always what I thought I would do. You know, I would have a career as a Broadway performer and then maybe producer.
Did you so you went to a lot of shows even as a young Oh yeah, a young kid.
Okay, yes, yeah, very very often. I would take off Wednesday and go on the train into Manhattan and then get a ten dollars tk TS seat. Yeah, or the when you did they used to do standing room. I don't know if they still do that now with COVID, but they used to do standing room for for a very discounted fee. And and I saw all those hits in the seventies. I saw you know, best little whorehouse, I saw a Pippin, I saw a horus line, I saw you know, they're playing our song, and I loved it.
I thought it was the most magical part of the world. And I came to find out in my career that I've been very lucky to do a lot of different things in different avenues, and I think the most enjoyable for me is definitely Broadway. But it's a young person's game because eight shows a week when you're sixty one, trying to remember the lines is not what it was in my twenties.
You know, Yeah, you know it's funny because you know, I don't know if you know this. I started off in theater as well, and I thought I thought that that was my life, that was all I wanted to do as well, and so I was never based in New York. I did some shows there, but I was sort of on that major regional theater circuit, traveling from city to city, Berkeley Rep and the Guthrie and others. And I think what you just said is so true. It is kind of a young person's game that eight
shows a week, NonStop. The only day you have off is Monday, and nobody else is off on Mondays. It's hard to have a life, right.
Well, you only have your life and your world amongst the people who are on your schedule. So it's a small community. It's a very connected kind community. Everyone knows each other. It's so much more tangible than the vagueness of Hollywood success. When you're on Broadway, you know, you see the same people when you go out to eat in between shows at Joe Allen's, and you know, you get your routine and it becomes your life and your world. And it is a beautiful part of show business. It's
the part that kind of moves me the most. When you go home after doing a series, go in your bed, you go to sleep. It's not the same as live performers there with you making a show every night just for those sixteen hundred people in the theater. You know.
Yeah, you're in high school and your dream is to be on Broadway. What begins to get you into stand up?
I did a comedy show where you make fun of the teachers, called Senior Follies, Okay, And I would take the whole Saturday night live record and I would change the names, like you know miss Baron, who was a very skinny, flat chested teacher. More on this story as it develops, right, I would just change the and I've made it all about the teachers. Well, they thought I was a genius. They're like, I'm like, don't, don't put on that record because I stole everything from there, you know.
And so I wrote it and I did Rosanne, Rosanna, Dana, you haven't nice. You got a little piece of saliva and your mom that goes up and down and up and and I had a wig on. And this man comes over to me, who's about thirty and I'm now sixteen, right, and he says, my brother is in this play. Yeah, I'm his older brother. I just opened a comedy club out on Huntington, Long Island. Uh, you know, next two town over, why don't you come and do some stand up And I was like, I don't want to do
stand up. I want to be on Broadway, right, And he was like, well, maybe before you get to Broadway you can do a little stand up. And I was like, well, i'll try. So I go to this club and it's a Saturday night and it's every kid I knew in high school that would and I was popular in high school. The whole place was packed, and I didn't really have an act per se, but I would make fun of the people in the audience, like, oh, mindy, you know, do you know that your boyfriend Billy made out with
Lisa Shackner last week? Like it would just be like cobitzing, you know. Well, I killed because they thought it was hysterical that I was on a comedy club. And well, Richie said, why don't you come back tomorrow night? And I was like, all right, I'll try it again. Look how good I was. The next night was a school night and nobody could come, so it was just a regular crowd. When I say that I died a death
on that stage, it was torturous to watch. So I get off and Richie goes well, you know, you gotta bomb a little bit, kid, you get a little bit. And I'm like, okay, all right, I go back and he says, I can start working the open mic night as the as the MC and you know, not get paid really. But I did that and I learned a lot. I learned how to do it. And then Shirley Hempill from What's Happening, she was the headliner and she saw me at the open mic night and she told Richie Menavini, Oh,
that kid's going to open for me this weekend. And he said, she's not ready. I'm not paying her. She's novid. She said, well, I won't perform if you don't book her and pay her fifty bucks a show. So it was like I made three hundred dollars on the weekend. I could not believe it. I couldn't believe it. And
that's how it began, you know. A few years later, when I was twenty two, a woman at that same comedy club came over to me, and she's in her forties and she says, my dad is Ed McMahon, and I'm the talent coordinator for Star Search, and we'd like you to come on Star Search. I thought, you're not Claudia McMahon, you're not his daughters, what would you be
doing here? Sure enough, that was Claudia McMahon, and it was Ed's daughter, and she got me on that show where I won five or six weeks in a row and made like twenty seven hundred dollars each time I won. I was rolling in it right, and I ended up not winning the year but the final one hundred thousand dollars prize. But I got to a point where now
I was known enough to be a headliner. So by twenty two after that show was on, I was headlining all over the country in small venues like little clubs, you know, but still it was it was a living for sure. I could make a living. And that's how it began.
So when you say I'm going I want to go back just a teeny bit. But you were m seeing these comedy nights. So what were you What were you learning as you watched these comics?
Well, you know, it was mostly open mic night, and you don't really learn a lot from open mic night because you know, nobody there is a professional. But Richie was so kind to me. He used to let me come and hang out on the weekends in an empty seat. So I rarely got to see female comics, which was a bummer because there were so few of us back then.
They were like, you know, ten women, and we were working the circuit and we never got booked together because they didn't think two women could do a show together. You know, it was so rare to have a woman comic that they didn't ever let us work together, which was kind of sad. But what I learned from watching comics is first of all, that you have to use your own material. I used Jerry Seinfeld's material when I was seventeen, right, And not only did I take his material,
I took his cadence. So I literally went on stage and said, you know, my cow got stuck on the way here. What am I looking for?
Big?
On off, switch on off. I'm thinking, hey, dogs don't have pockets, you know I did. And they walked off stae and I got a very good response, right, And these male comics come over to me in their thirties and I'm like a teenager and they said, where'd you get that? I said, Jerry Seinfeld, he was on MERV Griffin yesterday, he's a comedian. They say, well, you cannot use his jokes. I go why. They go, he you have to write your own jokes. I go, hold it.
Barbara Streisam does not write music. All she does is sing I'm just going to be funny. I'm not going to write my own jokes. I'm not a writer. And they're like, well, that's how you have to do it. And here's our advice. Talk about your family, something nobody else talks about. Talk about your own experience and your own family. So that's what I learned, how to take my life, exaggerate it, twist it, and present it as
a finished product. Like I learned that there's a couple kinds of comedy conversational and presentational, and the difference is pretty big. And which kind did you want to be? Where did you naturally fall in your comedic timing and
your comedic vision? You know? And it was very very helpful whenever I read like Max Max Malcolm glod Well whatever his name is, and it says you have to do like one hundred thousand hours of something to get I put in my time at those comedy clubs years and years and years.
You know, which type do you think you're more conversational presentation.
I definitely think when I started, I was presentational, okay, right. I would work a bit, work a bit, work a bit, get it till it was a finished product and wrapped up in a nice little bow. I put it in the basket, and then I go on. But as I've gotten older and with this job now of podcasting, I think I prefer a more conversational approach. You know, even when I'm watching young comedians, I think I love when they're having conversations rather than you know, but I'm bumch, but I'm bumch.
You know. Yeah, Well it's interesting because you know, we're all both in this business and by the way, even people who are not in this business, you're everyone's playing a character, right to a certain degree. You're playing a character with your family, or with your friends, or with this set of friends. It's different than that other set of friends. And but for you, did you feel like you were creating a character which was Rosie the stand up?
Or what percentage of yourself did you bring into it?
Well, you know, I didn't bring anything about being gay because it was at a time when no one really talked about it and or asked you about it. Like no one ever said to me as I was, you know, growing up in the industry, Oh, by the way, are you gay? Like it wasn't a conversation. And I remember once when I was touring with Greece before we came into Broadway, and Lois Smith, who was a legendary publicist,
was for one of the people who founded PMK. She was my publicist, and she was amazing because she was also Marilyn Monroe's publicist, and she knew everyone in show business and she was a legend and a wonderful blessing that she was in my life. And she had me interview somebody from Patrick Pachenko, I think his name is, from Cosmopolitan magazine and he asked me if I was dating anyone and I said no, and he said, well, who would you want to date? And I said anyone
who applies? And he said could that person be a woman? I said, you never know, could be. Well, Lois called Helen Gurley Brown and had that part taken out of the interview. It was a time when there was no internet, the rumors weren't flying around everywhere. You could just remove it. She would made a call and removed it, you know, So I didn't use that part of my life, but I used my childhood because I was a young kid
doing it starting out right, I was twenty. It was in my teens in the early twenties, and and I talked about my Irish being Irish and what that meant, and my dad with a brogue, and you know, I did my life as much as I could, but I didn't you know, I didn't put in any of the personal stuff about sexuality. And I don't think I would have even been I've been able to imagine how to incorporate that at the time.
You know, did you lie or was it just omission?
It was omission, but it was also a very public non secret. Like I would take Kelly, who was my wife, and to the Emmys every year, would sit next door. I mean, like I didn't show up with a boy. You know, people would say, well, you like you pretended that you love Tom Cruise. I go, no, I do love Tom Cruise. I fully love the fourteen year old girl. And me who put Bobby Sherman's picture on the wall loves him in the same that I loved Bobby Sherman.
And he's turned out to be personally in my experience the most unbelievably consistent kind man to me. He sends me flowers on my birthday, he sends me things when my children are born. He's been stalwart and steady and really really like a dream almost to me where he could have run the other way going stalker stalker, you know. But yeah, so I don't know that. I don't think that I was hiding, but I didn't have a way to approach the gay thing because of the time period
that it was in. Like when my show started, there was no will and grace right right. They said to me after the first season, Oh, there's a new show coming on NBC. It's a gay guy and a girl and they're going to be roommates. And I'm like, well, that'll never last. I'm gonna have a show with a gay person on it. I mean seriously, that was like what everyone thought. If people knew somebody was gay, they didn't watch. And remember Love Sidney. Do you remember that?
It was a Tony Randall series that ran for like three weeks and they never said that he was gay. But he had a picture of a man over the fireplace and he would sort of look at it at the end of the episode, and I remember the Catholic Church went that shit crazy and it was pulled off the air. Wow, it just wasn't in my reality to
think that it was accomplishable. Now, then the lawsuit came out with the ACLU where gay foster parents like me, I was a gay foster parent, were unable to adopt even the children they raised because that was the law in Florida, and the ACLU had a lawsuit with the Loft and Cruteau is the two men's names who the lawsuit was named after. They were pediatric aids nurses and
aids cars. So anyway, I came out through that and that was like in January, right after nine to eleven, and it kind of was not even a story because we were aill in shock as a nation.
You know, right, Star Search nineteen eighty four, you're making twenty seven hundred dollars a week. Do you consider that chance meeting with Claudia McMahon, What kind of impact do you feel like that had on your career? Did that change your life totally?
One hundred. It was a very big show. I venture to say that it was as popular in nineteen eighty four as American Idol was at its height. Sam Harris had been on the year before and America fell in love with him and his Judy Garland impression singing, and this was year two and so it was a very big deal and I went from being maybe an MC or an opener to a headliner after that. No, they weren't like big venues like Caesar's, you know, which I
eventually worked my way up to. But they were little clubs, but you could make a living, you know. So I think if it hadn't been for Claudia McMahon, I would have toiled away in New York at the comedy clubs, you know, forever and hopefully you know, got a career or a sitcom or hopefully you know, get to play Rhoda Norgenstern.
You know.
Yeah, so I was. I was very happy with that chance meeting and and stayed you know, in touch with him throughout his life, and he was very proud of the Irish me that got up there to the finals.
Yeah, at this point, do you consider yourself And I talked to a lot of people about this. I get I get introduced or identified as this often, do you at that point at least did you consider yourself a comedian or an actor.
Well, I think I think I would say actor, okay, because I was acting like a comedian, right, right, That's what I was studying comedy and then performing it and trying to figure out how to mold that clay myself every night on stage. And and you know, I got pretty good at it. I mean I got nominated for a couple of Emmys for my specials. And you know I headlined Caesar's Palace. I mean that's a pretty big gig.
You know, it was a huge gig.
Yeah, And I filled in for George Burns on his hundredth birthday at Caesar's Palace. He was supposed to be performing, but he couldn't, and he asked me to perform in his stead, and I did. And he called me in the dressing room and said, Rosie up. Did you hear the one about the domain at the Sparmbank? His job was to say thank you for coming, he told me jokes one hundred years old Hews on his deathbed, one hundred years old. He died like a week or two later.
You know, oh, unbelievable. When I think about the people I've met, right, when I think about what my life has been since that little girl on Long Island. I'm kind of in awe of what's happened to me, right, you know, but it almost I have that dissociation still where it almost feels like it's kind of not me. Not like I'll see myself in at at the height of my fame, on the cover of a magazine and I'd walk by in New York in those little magazine huts they have, and I go, oh, look, Rosie O'Donnell's
on Newsweek. But I wouldn't think, oh, look, there's me right right, there's me right.
You do star search, you get some television shows, give me a break to mention one, you're headlining comedy clubs, then bigger and bigger, and then suddenly you're getting I assume, although I shouldn't assume, make some house out of you and me that you start getting talked to about being in the in the in the.
Pictures, in the pictures, the movies.
A league of their own obviously.
Well, I mean it's like all time classic static, unbelievable.
Did you get approached to do that? Yes, you got you got it. I was.
I was a VJ. I became a VJ on Video Hits one VH one. Yeah, and I would make little two minutes the bits four times an hour live on TV. Okay, so I had to say coming up next as Whitney Houston from VH one Hits one, a special edition of a new album that and you know, and okay, that's
thirty seconds. Now you have a minute and a half left, and i' start telling stories, Oh you know what happened today on the way is And you'd see the cameramen laugh and the camera would literally go like this because it was just me and two guys sitting there making it up for hours, right, And my agent called and said, can you play baseball? And I said yes? And she was also Julia Roberts agent, and I said, if there's one thing I can do better than Julia Roberts, it's this,
you know. And so you had to play baseball first before you could audition, okay. And I played baseball very well, and you know, Penny knew who I was, and it was very very sisterly and took me under her wing. And there was times when she was calling out direction to us. Right, So she's got a bullhorn, she's got that accent. She usually had something in her mouth, like a piece of bacon or a cigarette, and she'd right cigarette and she'd be going, okay, well, what are you
girls are all about? A fair there? Don't like bendo again? Get the file ball, come up with a hot dog and him I wants to do it. Nobody understood what she meant. Everyone looked at me and I go, I'll do it. You go, why always rosy? It's always rosy? Okay, go do it Rosie. So that part ended up being much bigger than it was written because of her generosity and her encouraging improvisation and you know, so so that
was a huge, huge role to get. And then you know, three days in Penny goes calls me in the office and goes, tomorrow, Madonna's gonna come in. If she likes you, one likes me, she's gonna do the movie. Try to be funny. I was like, no pressure, no pressure at all, my first movie best friends with the most famous woman in the world. What's the chances of that happening?
How was that for you? I mean, so you're a fan.
I was a Madonna fan and totally and everyone was. Everyone was. Of course, she was magnificent. She was and still is, you know, one of those one named one a generation Bowie and and Elvis and Madonna, like there's no denying a legacy. Beyonce exactly, Beyonce and Eminem if I do say so myself. But yeah, so it changed my whole life, My whole career changed. Every single thing
was being cast as Madonna's best friend. And you know, the thing is, we had very similar childhoods, with our mother's dying when we were young, and big Catholic families, and you know, we really got along right away. And the weirdest thing was I had just seen her movie Truth or Dare the day before. Penny said to me, you're going to meet her tomorrow. And when I met her, I said, you know, my mother died when I was young too, and I was named after her as well.
And when I went to her graveside and laid on that grave with my own name on the two, I never thought I'd meet someone else who did that, and she was like, that was it for us. Then we became like, you know, blood sisters. You know, it's hard to maintain friendships in this business sometimes when people live all over the world and they're super duper megastars like Madonna, you know, but we have maintained a consistent, lifelong friendship
for the last thirty years. And I can't imagine what my career would have done or become or if it hadn't been her in that movie, if it had been any other actress. But she was literally the most famous woman in the world at the time.
Yeah, and totally, and also Tom Hanks and also Gina Davis, yes, I mean this, and Penny Marshall, by the way, and John Love It's John love It. That's right. Yeah, that's right. I love that that friendship is real. I don't know, I don't know that's the that's the boy and me, the younger man and me. But loving that that is the case. I think we, you know, everyone who watches that movie wants wants that to be the case. You came back, skipping ahead and did a cameo on the
A League of their Own series. Yes, I did last year. Was that fun for you? I mean, this series deals with an issue you discussed earlier. There was a time when things weren't talked about as great as that movie was. Sexuality and race were not prominently featured, unlike the series. How did it feel for you to go back one into that world and two to be dealing with some of those issues a little bit deeper? Yeah?
Yeah. You know, Habby Jacobson is such a talent, and Natasha Leone is a close friend, and she introduces me to all these young amazing women who are you know, in their thirties and producing and directing and writing just like Natasha is, and acting. And it's been so great, you know, because it keeps me like inspired, and you know, like I see them doing so well, I'm like, oh my god, that's Aubrey Plaz. I know her through Natasha,
you know. So I met with her and with we had dinner and me Abby and Natasha, and Abby was telling me that she had met with Penny and she had the rights and she was thinking of doing this, and I said, oh my god, if you could, it would be fantastic, you know what, in a wonderful way that the new generation of young women athletes wanted to
be represented like that. You know, she wanted to put in all the realities that we face in our world today about all this you know, anti gay rhetoric, all of these bills that are being passed against trans people, and you know, what's currently political is very relevant, and it was then too. It's just we've only now caught up to, you know, almost telling the truth. We don't want to teach critical race theory, you know, God forbid.
We should actually teach what we have done as a nation and learned from and no longer are as horrible as we were dot com, you know. I mean, I don't know. I was so moved that she asked me to do it. I said, of course. I went down to Pittsburgh and walked in and they were all in our uniforms. Like it was so weird. I'm like this, like I'm looking around for Bitty Shram and Renee Coleman, all the women I did it with, Like I'm going,
how did this happen? You know? And I love the way they cast it as like homages to people like, you know, the girl who's chubby and beautiful, you know, and funny and wisecrack, and they have a Madonna archetype, they have a Bitty archetype. Like I loved how they did that, and they did it beautifully, and I was so proud of what that show stood for. The nuances, the inclusion, the historical perspective, the sociological relevance, it just really I thought it was an excellent piece of art.
And I'm very disappointed that Amazon only gave them four episodes. They got to pick up for four episodes, and you know, people love that series. I can tell you right now it's going to be a fan uproar because four is
not enough for that show. The girls were wonderful, the young women, and I thought it was an important role to play of this, you know, lesbian woman who based on a real character, real woman who had lived and presented as a man mostly you know, in a time when that would get you beat up by the cops. And I thought it was a very tastefully done gay bashing that happens every day, and that's been happening in
our country, you know, for too many years. And it was very trauma trauma, like I had a trauma response because even though your brain tells you these are cops, these are not cops. These are actors. And you just had lunch with them. That one has a kid, and that when someone's calling you names and hitting you with a ton, now it's a course, a prop one. Your body I think doesn't realize, oh my god, this is fake, you know, when you're being thrown against a like or
I'm not a good enough actor to separate it. But it was very traumatic to film, very emotional to film. But I was very proud of it, and I'm so happy that they asked.
Me, yeah, was it weird? I mean you talked about seeing them in your in your your uniform.
Yeah, in our uniforms, right.
I mean, this is what this is twenty twenty five year at thirty you know later yes, uh, I mean, what a gift to be able to go back, yes, and experience that.
Again, and to see also the excitement of this very young, very gifted group of actors and actresses going back.
You know, we talked about Madonna. There's Tom Hanks, so she and Davis Penny Marshall for her to be the director of your first film as well. I mean, a legend as an actor originally and now as a director. Do you feel like she helped.
You tremendously, Yeah, tremendously, tremendously. I can't even articulate it. She was my first director, and she featured me prominently in the movie that she didn't have to do that. She took me on every talk show she went on because she would usually get nervous and she wanted someone to commits with her. And we commits very good together. And then we started doing those KMAR commercials. You know, Yeah, made a lot of money on.
I forgot the care, Yeah, of course.
Me and Penny. And sometimes, you know, she would get there and she was in no shape to be awake and she had had a few too many the night before, and so David Steinberg, who directed them, and I would rewrite the script and have Penny dressed as an elf asleep on the toy shelf, and then I would just talk about what Kmart wanted us to say. But you know, she she indulged a little bit, Penny Marshall, and you know,
she got sick at the end. It was very sad, and when she lost Carrie, I think it was devastating. They were like glued at the hip, you know, for a very long time, and I think, you know, she got lonely and towards the end had gained a tremendous amount of weight from cancer treatments and was in a wheelchair, and you know, was was very unhappy and tragic, and I was in shock. Even though I knew that she wasn't well, I wasn't expecting to get the phone call
that she had passed. You know, yeah, I mean she took me to Laker games. She took me to every basketball, football, any sport. She was a hoarder, collector, like she had fifteen hundred quilts in her house and you know, in a thousand old typewriters, and you know, it's a crazy it was a crazy, extremely exotic and artistic and nutty way to live.
Right. It's funny that you just said the Lakers, because that's you know. I never had the opportunity to work with her, but many times in the in the bowels of Staples Center, and there was a little cigar room where I would run into Penny and she we would talk about the Lakers. Let's talk about basketball.
Yeah, yeah, that's all she cared about, really. And you know, she called me about ten years after we did League of their Own, So, you know, twenty years ago, twenty five years ago, mame and she said to me, Rosie, could you play soccer? I said, what could you play soccer? I don't know, I never It wasn't my sport truthfully, too much running. I didn't like it. I had to sit, but you know, yeah, I know how to play soccer. Why She's like, well, there's a team in Mexico. Great story,
you could be the lady. I go, I'm Rosie O'Donnell. I'm going to be the Mexican woman on the soccer coach. But she was always trying to like get everybody back together and do it again, and you know, do you play soccer. We'd never made the soccer movie, but we had a lot of dinners. We had a lot of late night conversations. She wasn't always easy to understand because she mum, and sometimes when you know she was feeling
no pain, she'd mumble a lot. I was on a private plane with her once, her plane from the Kmart commercial flying back to LA and she gave me a ride and it was full of Kmart crap, like you know, a stove right, like you know, an outdoor camping tent, and it was full. She goes, I like, get a calm on a plane, but we got so much shit, I don't know if there's gonna be a seat. And surely when I got on it was it was like
Santa's workshop. She took everything. It was right before Christmas, and she's like, I got everybody what I need for Christmas from Kmart.
Oh my gosh, that is amazing. Those were legendary, those commercials. I mean, I don't remember commercials, but I remember those commercials. Yes, I had totally forgotten. So prior to ninety six, you also do Sleepless in Seattle. Now is that a connection to knowing mister Hanks or is that totally separate?
That was Nora Ephron and her son Jake, who is a wonderful gay man that I've known since he was a baby. He loved Madonna, okay, like in a way that I can't even. So I went to Nora's house and I read for her movie Sleeps in Seattle, and she went and got new pages off the printer and
had me read those that they had just finished. And then I talked a little bit about what I knew about her, which I knew a lot, and she was kind of charmed, you know, I think, And she mentioned at dinner, oh, I interviewed this girl or audition this girl Rosie O'Donnell, and Jacob went, mom, you have to
hire her. She's about to come out in this Baseball movie and she plays Madonna's best friend and she's so great then, and Nora Efron gave me that job and then got me an apartment in the Apthorpe and I lived there with her and her husband Nick and her kids for a big chunk of time in New York City.
Wow. In ninety six, you decide to change careers again again. If you're Broadway actress, if you're a stand up comedian, you're a movie star. Now you decide to launch begin the Rosy O'Donnells show. Talk to me a little bit about how that happens. Is this something you want? You say, this is what I want? Or this kind of opportunity presented to you.
What happened was Kathy Lee Gifford was always saying at this time, and it was a very popular morning show. Her in regis that she was leaving. She was, you know, she didn't like the paparazzi and they did said things about her husband and she didn't like any of it, and she was quitting. So I had Parker, my first child, in June of ninety five, and I did Harriet the Spy six months later. I did not have a nanny
because I never knew anyone who had a nanny. So I had the baby with me for the first six months. And I bring my cleaning lady with me to the movie set in Toronto so she can watch him while I go do this movie. And I came back from work one day late, you know, in late hours, hard movie schedules, and he wouldn't come to me. She was holding him, and I put out my arms and he
wouldn't come to me. And I called my agent and said, I want a job that I could stay home in New York, that he can be raised with his cousins, that I can have a life, and I don't want to go away from my family and life for months at a time and live in a hotel. I did it. I don't think I can ask for more than the number one movie three summers in a row I was in. I don't know who wants more, but they're if they do, you know, shame on them, because that was pretty astounding.
And then they said, well, Kathy Lee Giffer is leaving,
we're going to put your name in and I said, fantastic. Well, Kathie Lee decided to stay, but they had got such a good reaction when they went and focus grouped it that they said, let's do your own show and I said, well, okay, I'm going to do it like Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas and they go, well, you know, is it going to be I said, no, It's going to be exactly mur Nobody gets hurt, celebrities come out, we have fun, we laugh, we might sing an Irish song, we play games,
and nobody gets hurt. And at the time, Heraldo was being beat up and Jenny Jones had a death with one of the guests because he was murdered by the other guests, and you know, people were being bloodied. It was like a horrible time for daytime. Yes, and so when I came on, it was like a breath of fresh air. And then, you know, they call me the Queen of Nice, which I knew was going to bite me in the ass and definitely did, because nobody really
is the Queen of nice. If you had seen my stand up, you never would have called me that because I went and went after Woody Allen. I went after societal ills. I you know, I used my voice loudly and wielded it, you know, powerfully, in certain parts of my life and career and felt like you have to that is what's asked of you. If you have access to a microphone, you better use it for a cause other than just yourself.
Right.
So anyway, I said, I want the Oprah deal. And at the time, nobody was paid to do a pilot, right, But they paid me five million dollars up front because I was coming off all these movies and I had, you know, made a lot of money, and then I had ownership and back end like Oprah. And I thought, well, this baby that I'm doing this for will be going into kindergarten in four you so I'll make a four
year deal and then I'll leave when he gets to kindergarten. Now, my mother had died at thirty nine, so I always knew I wanted to retire by forty. That was totally in my brain and I worked very hard up until I was forty in order to get that. And one of the things was the talk show. Now, it was a huge hit instantly. It you know, threw me into a level of fame that I don't think anyone is ever ready for. People kind of think they want it
and they crave it. But how you maintain your equilibrium, you know, in the middle of a tsunami, all you try to do is get some air, right trying to you can't get to a stable place. You just got to stick your head above the water and breathe, you know. And it caused a lot of anxiety for me, a lot of depression, a lot of panic, a lot of
feeling responsible for the things that go wrong. Like you know, April twentieth, nineteen ninety nine, Columbine, and I could not believe that in our country children were killing other children in schools while the cops stood outside like I couldn't. As a mother, I felt a duty to speak up. I had two small children, and I thought this has to stop. I'm gonna go speak out against the NRA, you know, and I did. I also had a breakdown
at that time. That's what I think we technically would call that, where I couldn't sleep and I would wake up and think that my children were in the hallway and there was a gunman in the house. And it was the first time I was put on medication. And I thank God every day that I was because I'm still here in one piece and having a great, happy life at sixty one. So you know, thank god, everybody
finds the way that works for them. But you know, my clinical depression and PTSD and you know, trauma tat two is pretty hard to deal with sometimes, but I'm on it. You know, I am a great therapist. I have a great psychopharmacologist. I'm totally in charge of keeping myself balanced and happy. That's great, and I have been able to do it. Yeah, been able to do it.
But so I took the show. I don't know how I got here from the show, but I took the show it and it became a huge hit, really really quickly. And then when it was a huge hit, I signed on for two more years, so that would make it six years, so he would be like in going into second grade. So I thought, that's still young enough. But that's what I did, and so when I left, he was seven. When I was done with the show, he was seven.
You talked about the label of queen of nice is what your label was? Yet you started your comedy career and through a lot of your stint. I mean you started your comedy career making fun of your teachers. Let's be clear of that. Yeah, true, yes, and making fun of your classmates at your first stand upright, because you don't have any material, Like, was that label for you difficult?
I just knew right away that's not really the right word, you know. But comparatively at the time to what was on daytime TV, Who's Your Daddy, you know, Maury Povich, Like, it was crazy, It was insane. People were having fistfights. It was crazy. And I wanted a safe place that my kids and I could watch, like my nana and I watched Dinah and MERV and Mike. I wanted a multi generational show like that. And you know, for that show, I was the Queen of nice at that time.
Right.
But whenever that's your moniker, you know, people are very happy to try to pull you off of it.
You know, do you like that form of entertainment like.
I used to? Okay, I used to. I used to love it. In fact, when they offered me my own show, I knew exactly how to do it because I loved and studied them so much all during the seventies and eighties. So by the time they asked me to do it, I was an expert at it. I had done my one hundred thousand hours, right, but I found during my own show this was happening. You know, you would only get someone when they were doing press for a certain movie.
They had specific stories because they're not comedians, right, And you had to prompt them with the story that someone produced talking to them and then told you about and you have to act surprised at it. You know, it's hard to be authentic when those are the rules. And the more and more we became a celebrity obsessed culture, the more social media platforms were added to our reality, the harder it got to find authentic way to talk
to people as entertainment. You know, I think what David Letterman has done is amazing that you know, he conquered that field and then some right, he created a whole new generation of kind of deadbeat, quirky, weird comedy. And he's now doing these beautiful produced sit down interviews, yeah, with people that he wants to talk to, and it's completely compelling because his intent is pure. You know, he's not trying to make a lot of money. And I hope he made a big deal. I'm sure he did.
He's David Letterman, but he's not sitting there going you know, I'm gonna do this for the money, right, right, He's gonna do it as a creative outlet to keep your brain agile and your artistic nature exercised. So I loved the art form back then. I would love to see what it can become now, Zach Gelifan between two ferns. Come on, that's a pretty good take on a talk show, right,
There's ways to do it. And you know, I'm just not so sure that the show would be able to be as popular today because we're such a divisive nation. We're really cut in half. I mean, you watch TV and France and Israel, and everyone is on the verge of authoritarianism, pouncing and grabbing their country. And we're not the only ones, you know, we're not the only ones, but we're all in crisis and it's been for a while,
and you know, it's really hard to stay balanced. And you know, we had Rory Kennedy on yesterday and it's just today, I guess it's on. I'm sorry, I don't know we dropped it. I don't know what that means. But anyway, she was saying that, you know, scientists are saying that there's maybe ten more years and then there is complete breakdown and failure of world because of climate change. Like these are pretty meta concepts, right, but we have
to get together. I don't know if a show like mine, if if I would be allowed to be as loud as I want to be on TikTok and and whatever state my views, you know, and it would you know, it doesn't seem that it would fit in today's culture. But I don't know. You know, I think when you watch it, there's an innocence, there's a nostalgia. Yes, there's a feeling of new babies being born and life blossoming, and you know, it's really wonderful. I watch it back and I get choked up sometimes and I go, wow,
look at that. You know, my kid will find it on We'll find a clip on something and Blaky You'll send it to me. He's like, Mom, you know, told me you met him like I met everybody. Everybody there was to me, I met him.
It's awesome. I mean, it's it's so crazy. When you think back, you have all this jews coming off as you say, the number one movie for three years in a row, three summers in a row. Yeah, yeah, three summers in a row. And you create a show that you want to do that's different than what's happening there. It becomes a huge success, and you're still feeling the anxiety, in part, I'm sure because of all of the attention
being focused on you at this time. I mean, you truly are one of the biggest stars in the country that everybody is looking to, and you know, diving into and all of that. What do you see now as the show's legacy after it's it's now done.
I would say it was the time of the legacy of the show. I think is love because I think the reason that I was successful is because I really loved Florence Henderson. And when I had her on the show, it was trippy to think that I would dream that she would be my mom and that here she is
sitting next to me and being motherly. Florence Henderson would come over to my house and play with Parker and these older women who knew that I was a motherless child, motherless child, you know, and stepped in in a magical way almost. You know, there was something magical about the show. It was pure, and it was it was kind, and it was it was fun. I think we had fun, you know, and everybody wanted to be in the audience. It was a tiny little studio with like two hundred seats,
and everybody wanted to be there. And then when when I did tickle Me Elmo, I remember getting a call from Aaron Spelling, like, one of the richest men in the world calls me to ask me if I had four Jicklebee almos for his grandchildren. I was like, okay, sir, well listen, thank you for Dynasty. I enjoyed that so much when I was a job. Let me get back to you. And then I go to my assistant find four fucking almost for Aaron Spelling like, and then I think, whose life is this?
This is a crazy life.
You know, it's a crazy life. And I never really believed at the height of like when oh, you're the most influential, you're on this list, You're on that list. You know. I usually didn't go to the party, you know, I like, I didn't always believe it, you know what I mean, Like, I feel like I have a healthy amount of reality in my show business. I don't know, is that weird to say? No?
I think I get it, but but you must be aware, or you should be aware of the countless doors that you opened in your career for other people in the LGBTQ community. You opened up a lot of doors during this time and after for people that came after you. Do you are you proud of that? Do you acknowledge that to yourself?
Yes, yes, I definitely do. And I you know, I feel that some people are marathon runners and some people are sprinters, and I knew that I'm hardly a jogger, right, I work very very hard, but I'm tired, you know, like I want to lay down and watch something like I don't have the kind of energy that that I did back then, and it was a very large amount of work. But I do realize that. And you know, I was at NOBU yesterday and this is it's.
So funny because you're so not this. I'm gonna totally interrupt you that that is like the most like Hollywood.
I know, I know yesterday anyway, I've never seen it.
He was like the opposite of that. So I had to at least call it.
You have to. I've never seen a Kardashian there. I just want you to know. I go there like three or four times a week. It's almost like my come my neighborhood restaurant. I'm right on the beach in Malibu and right next door is Noboo.
I just ate at Nobuo two nights in a row in Vegas.
Now, if I could eat it every day, I would eat it every day. But can I read this to you? What this this note that happened at Nobuo.
Yes.
So I see this family sitting in front of me, and they're very young. I thought at first they were teenagers, but very kind of good looking, like like he looked like an artist to me, like I thought he had done real funky clothes. I bet he's a fashion designer, I thought to myself, And what a pretty wife. And I go to get the check and the guy says, oh, it's paid for. I said, what do you mean. He said, well,
there's a note for you. And apparently this young man paid my bill and left with and never bothered me, but he left me this note. Rosie, Thank you for being you and setting an example of what it means to be yourself in the face of adversity and negativity. Because of your strength and bravery, a little boy found the light in a childhood riddled with violence, drug abuse, and depression, and now I'm one of the biggest rappers
in the whole world. Thank you with unconditional reverence. Logic Bobby Hall, Now, I had no idea who Logic was, but I felt like, this is the legacy of the show, that there are millions of artists and they were inspired, and they knew to go there, and they knew what we were selling was membership in this world. And uh,
I was so blown away. I go on to my son who's twenty three, and my daughter who's twenty and I send the copy of it to both of them and they both call me screaming on the phone, screaming, I am going to use this for the next three years. Like Blake was like, do you want to keep it? I'm like, yes, I'm keeping it. He's like, I want to show my friends. I'm like, I'll send you a picture of it. You know. But I was so I was so.
Moved that is I'm you know what I'm so that makes me so happy. Yeah, for you, that makes me so happy that that happened for you. Obviously for Logic as well, that he was able to come out of a difficult situation in part because of you. But for him to tell you that.
And to buy me a very expensive dinner as well a lunch with a friend of mine who I knew was a comedian years ago and I hadn't seen in forty years. We had a lunch and talked about doing stand up in the old days. But he did, and I thought, you know, and I think to myself every time that somebody writes to me or stops me or tells me, you know, it is a gift. It's a gift.
And my children make fun of me because of the difference between when they were little and we used to go to the mall and going to the mall now, and or we go to a baseball game or a football game, and and my sons would totally rag on me, like, mom, nobody recognized you the whole game.
You know.
I'm like, well, honey, Mommy's lost it. I got gray hair now, and I don't know what to tell you. Nobody knew you.
Well, you start going to games again. Yeah, by the way, because you're you are hot.
I am. I didn't know.
That you you are, you are absolutely you come back. You do smelf?
Yeah?
Uh you Then your friend, as you said, Natasha Leone, you get cast in season two of Russian All and Now Onward with Rosie O'Donnell. For those who haven't heard it yet, this is Rosie's brand new podcast where she gets to have real conversations with incredible people. Right, what has it been like for you diving into the podcast world.
You know, I'm I'm just learning how to do it, though, Brian, I thought it would be more like the radio show, and it's very different than a radio show. Yeah, you know, I had a thing I'm serious for a while, and yes, yeah, it was four friends of mine and we all just kind of did like what Howard does in the morning. You know, we talked to a celebrity or whoever we could get, and we just that was the one to mimic. If you're going to mimic a successful radio pro person,
it's going to be Howard's stern. Right. So, yes, but I did think. I did think I'm gonna do something creative that I can stay home because I have a daughter who has autism, who is ten years old, and I want to be I have to be more accessible to her, especially now that she's getting to be a preteen.
And you know, they've what I've heard from doctors and experts and people I used to help guide her is the teen years are quite difficult usually because you know, hormones are going everywhere and emotions are sometimes confusing for artistic kids. And so I wanted to do something I could do like this right from my home. I hear
her playing her iPad in the background, right. So it's it works for me, and it's artistically fulfilling because I get to talk to people like you were interesting and have conversations that matter and mean things without you know, a timeframe of you have to get off at this many a m minute.
I mean, that's what I always talked about, not being on such a strict schedule. You know, the idea of you know, a couple of weeks ago, I did the Today Show, right, and it's like I all I hear is you have thirty five seconds, you have fifteen seconds, giggle, giggle, giggle, one joke and we're done. You know, being able to really talk to people, are you? Are you having a good time with very good time?
But I really am just learning, Like I have to admit that I never really listen to any Besides, I've seen Joe Rogan a lot because I knew him as a comic and I, you know, like his podcast. I think it's very interesting. I listen every day during the Trump administration to Podsave America, and those guys saved me and they helped me navigate my emotions through the trauma. And I aside from that, I haven't really known the art form for very long. And in hindsight, I think
it was kind of lazy of me. I should have like I should have consumed it more before I started trying to do it. But you know, Laurie and I who's been a producer with me since my TV show, she did all the music on my TV show. We put it together and and we we got something that has a strong voice. And now the other parts were gonna fix, you know, like where to put the commercials and how many commercials? And should it be longer? Where should it be? You know those things that I have
no knowledge about. You know.
Yeah, Well, I look, you have absolutely crushed everything that you have that you have that you've done so far, and you're such a delight to talk to. I have long admired you and your career and all that you've accomplished and done for people. I yeah, I wish you nothing but the best.
Thank you so much, and the same thing for you. You've made me laugh so many times. My kid, uh does all the impressions and knows all the lines, and it's a beautiful it's a beautiful legacy to have been so funny for so long on such a great show. You know, those people like Mary Tyler Moore for me, Valor Harper, you know Vivian Vance, They're factors in my childhood and you are that for so many Well, thank.
You, thank you so much. I can't wait for us to do it again. This is part one.
That's part one. I'll be back for parts part one right. Thank you so.
Much, Rosie, thank you so much for joining me. That was a pleasure. I cannot wait to check out your new podcast, Onward with Rosie O'Donnell, and truly I cannot wait for part two. Listeners, I'll see you next week for another episode with another fantastic guest who's thankfully not dead yet. Boy, you know, I love doing this podcast, I really really do. Thank you for listening, have a great week, and uh yeah, I'll see you next week. Off the Beat is hosted and executive produced by me
Brian Baumgartner, alongside our executive producer lingg Lee. Our senior producer is Diego Tapia. Our producers are Liz Hayes, Hannah Harris and Emily Carr. Our talent producer is Ryan Papa Zachary, and our intern is Sammy Katz. Our theme song Bubble and Squeak, performed by the one and only Creed Bratton,