Rosie O’Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres Gregory Tempo/Shutterstock; Shutterstock
Rosie O’Donnell mentioned she doesn’t have any plans on mending her and Ellen DeGeneres’ strained friendship.
“I knew her for therefore a few years. It simply felt like I don’t belief this individual to be in my world,” O’Donnell, 61, mentioned in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter revealed on Thursday, June 15.
The 2 comedians grew to become associates within the late ‘90s, as each the Now and Then actress’ fashionable discuss present, The Rosie O’Donnell Present, and DeGeneres’ self-titled sitcom, Ellen, premiered in 1996. “It was a superb relationship. We have been associates. We supported one another,” O’Donnell informed the outlet. The Discovering Dory star, 65, even jokingly hinted at her sexuality by coming out as “Lebanese” on O’Donnell’s discuss present in 1996.
Nonetheless, O’Donnell famous that their relationship modified after DeGeneres formally got here out as homosexual on a 1997 episode of Ellen.
“It grew to become unusual, ‘There can’t be two lesbians on this city,’ sort of factor,” O’Donnell — who was beforehand married to Kelli Carpenter in 2004 and Michelle Rounds from 2012 to 2015 — acknowledged. “Then we every had success and went separate methods.”
O’Donnell revealed that DeGeneres — whose eponymous discuss present The Ellen DeGeneres Show concluded its 19-season run in 2022 — checked in on her through textual content “a number of weeks in the past,” earlier than mentioning the “imply” remark that led to their falling out.
“She mentioned it on Larry King Reside. Larry King mentioned, ‘No matter occurred to Rosie O’Donnell’s present? She went down the tubes as quickly as she got here out,’” O’Donnell defined. “And the quote that Ellen mentioned was, ‘I don’t know Rosie. We’re not associates.’ I used to be watching TV in mattress with my spouse going, ‘Did she simply say that?’”
O’Donnell famous she would “by no means” say something like that about a close friend. “When she was in a perplexing scenario and folks have been saying issues about her, I mentioned, ‘Let me stand subsequent to you and say that I’m Lebanese, too,’” she quipped to The Hollywood Reporter. “When it was a downward media time for me, she didn’t do something.”
Throughout her current textual content dialog with DeGeneres — who’s been married to Portia de Rossi since 2008 — O’Donnell mentioned the previous Ellen’s Game of Games host apologized for her Larry King Reside feedback, though she didn’t bear in mind saying them.
“I suppose she noticed me discuss it on Andy Cohen‘s present,” the mom of 5 acknowledged. “I remembered it so nicely, I had T-shirts printed and I gave them to my employees that mentioned ‘I don’t know Rosie. We’re not associates.’”
To not point out, O’Donnell mentioned she turned down any alternatives to seem on The Ellen DeGeneres Present after her former pal as soon as informed her she couldn’t be a visitor on the sequence.
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Us Weekly has reached out to DeGeneres for remark.
