Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, policymakers, and performers, to
Speaker 1: hear their stories. What inspired their creations, what decisions change
Speaker 1: their careers, what relationships influence their work. I never had
Speaker 1: a fallback on purpose, and my dad used to say
Speaker 1: that all the time, you need a fallback, but I
Speaker 1: knew that this career was so difficult to succeed in
Speaker 1: that if you had a fallback, you would fall back.
Speaker 1: So I didn't have one. It's so great to be
Speaker 1: back here in Boston, where I went to college, where
Speaker 1: I started the one stand up comedy. Rosie O'Donnell has
Speaker 1: been a stand up comic, an actress, a star search contestant,
Speaker 1: a talk show host, an activist, a philanthropist, a magazine editor,
Speaker 1: a Broadway and television producer, and a mom. Rosie has
Speaker 1: five kids. You have to manage your time and make
Speaker 1: each one of them feel spe doing it all was
Speaker 1: a pattern Rosie established early in high school. She was
Speaker 1: voted homecoming queen, prom queen, senior class president, and class clown.
Speaker 1: Rosie o'donald has never shied away from a controversial subject.
Speaker 1: Her combination of confidence and conviction has led to very
Speaker 1: public disagreements with celebrities such as Tom Selleck, Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: and Elizabeth Hasselbeck. From the view, you just said our
Speaker 1: enemies in Iraq? Did Iraq attack us? No, I'm saying
Speaker 1: al kada? Okay, did Iraq attack us? Elizabeth, Iraq did
Speaker 1: not attack us. We've been there before. I'm saying our
Speaker 1: enemies al Qaeda? Are you hearing that? But that same
Speaker 1: combination led to her hugely successful talk show, The Rosie
Speaker 1: o'donald Show, in which she talked with celebrities and non
Speaker 1: celebrities alike. Rosie talked about what mattered to them and
Speaker 1: to her. She earned herself the nickname the Queen of Nice.
Speaker 1: Where are you from? A Toronto? And he came down
Speaker 1: here just for the show, just for the show. My
Speaker 1: husband drove on me and my friends ten hours. So
Speaker 1: I'm very afraid to fly. He didn't have tickets because
Speaker 1: where I don't know. He's wandering outside thirty robbers, probably
Speaker 1: watching the show, freaking out that I'm here because I
Speaker 1: said I would be here. If he's still in Toronto,
Speaker 1: you don't know he's here? Is in New York? Where
Speaker 1: in New York at a her hotel. Again, what I'll
Speaker 1: tell you the Belvedere right on fifty second eight. Hey,
Speaker 1: what's his name? Eddie? Eddie, get you butt down, Rosie
Speaker 1: o'donald is nice. I'm grateful from what she has. She
Speaker 1: might say that has something to do with her childhood
Speaker 1: when she suffered the hardest blow imaginable. You know, my
Speaker 1: mother died. There were two younger siblings and two older siblings.
Speaker 1: That's right, So that was really hard everything, yes, and
Speaker 1: and it's sort of close to her, not really. I
Speaker 1: mean I think that she was very irish and reserved
Speaker 1: like my father. There was no I love us in
Speaker 1: the house. There was no hugging, you know. It was
Speaker 1: more like like I went to Jackie South all the time.
Speaker 1: My best friend still lived across the street when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, and her mother would say I love
Speaker 1: you to them, and I remember being struck like cold
Speaker 1: from that, like you would say that to each other,
Speaker 1: Like no one said that to each other and my
Speaker 1: family ever until we were really older adults, and even
Speaker 1: then it was difficult. So I remember when I had
Speaker 1: my first child, when Parker, who was now eighteen, the
Speaker 1: I love yous were frequent and fluid. And you know,
Speaker 1: even now, I dropped my boy off at school this
Speaker 1: morning and he's thirteen. You know, I'm like, by Blake,
Speaker 1: I love He's like love you to mom, like casual nothing,
Speaker 1: don't even And that was so foreign to me as
Speaker 1: a child, and I craved it. I craved it. And
Speaker 1: when a mother dies in a family like that, things
Speaker 1: turned to disarray because the washing machine, the you know,
Speaker 1: things that my dad just had no clue about, Like
Speaker 1: he mashed the potatoes in the water. He was trying
Speaker 1: to make mashed potatoes. After she ducked, It's like all
Speaker 1: of the domesticity went out of the house and it
Speaker 1: was so kind of stark and cold and and run down.
Speaker 1: And you know, the things that a mother's touch generally
Speaker 1: bring to your life, we're missing. And that's all the
Speaker 1: all the softness and the and the kind of safety
Speaker 1: and security to prepare the family for a life without her.
Speaker 1: Rosie's mother taught each of her five children a different
Speaker 1: meal to cook. Rosie learned how to make London broil,
Speaker 1: which she says she still won't eat because of the
Speaker 1: memories it conjures. Up in her hometown of Komack, Long Island,
Speaker 1: not far from where I grew up. Rosie began to
Speaker 1: plot out her future and a life in show business.
Speaker 1: You know, I never wanted to be a talk show host.
Speaker 1: That was never my goal. I wanted to be on Broadway. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I wanted to be a Bette Midler backup singer,
Speaker 1: one of the Harletts. So when I was, you know,
Speaker 1: in in Comac High School South and nine, and I
Speaker 1: would take the train in and see a matinee every
Speaker 1: Wednesday and cut out of school and do standing room.
Speaker 1: And so my goal was Broadway. And I saw a
Speaker 1: bet on Broadway and Clams and a Half Shell one
Speaker 1: of my first shows ever. That was my goal. It
Speaker 1: was in streisand it was never to be. You know,
Speaker 1: I didn't grow up listening to Johnny Carson like every
Speaker 1: comic tells you. I, you know, admired to be like
Speaker 1: my mother. You don't want to, No, I never thought
Speaker 1: of it. My mother didn't like Joan Rivers. My mother
Speaker 1: thought she was mean. And I remember my mother telling
Speaker 1: me Tody Fields was a real comedian, Phillis Diller was
Speaker 1: a real comedian, but that Joan Rivers is not nice.
Speaker 1: And she said, you never go for in exactly and
Speaker 1: Joan was made fun of Elizabeth Taylor, which I think
Speaker 1: to my mother was sacrasych you know, so I never
Speaker 1: like thought of it. So when I was in high school,
Speaker 1: I would do the play for the seniors, right, everybody
Speaker 1: makes fun of the teachers and like a Saturday and
Speaker 1: night life type thing the senior year, and I was
Speaker 1: a freshman and they knew that I was sort of
Speaker 1: into comedy, and they said, would you write the skits?
Speaker 1: So I did so I was the only sort of
Speaker 1: freshman allowed to be and for every year sophomore junior,
Speaker 1: I was writing these skits. So the last years, my
Speaker 1: senior year, this guy comes in and and says, hey,
Speaker 1: did you write all this stuff? And I said yeah.
Speaker 1: He goes wanting to be a stand up. I'm like, God,
Speaker 1: I don't know how to do stand up because, well,
Speaker 1: I own a club, east Side comedy club in Huntington's
Speaker 1: near you. Why don't you come and do stand up?
Speaker 1: What year is that? That is nineteen seventy eight? What
Speaker 1: is a stand up comedy club like in Huntington's night Well,
Speaker 1: I was sixteen years old. I just got my license,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't really old enough to get into clubs.
Speaker 1: So I took my neighbor Dory Norton's license. Remember when
Speaker 1: they were paper and you could take a little pin
Speaker 1: and scrape. So I had fake ID to get A
Speaker 1: whole career is built on a crime, actually without a death.
Speaker 1: I was impersonating um. So I went in and you know,
Speaker 1: when you're sixteen years old, you're fearless, right. Also, everybody
Speaker 1: I knew from my high school showed up that night
Speaker 1: because it was a Saturday night or something, and he
Speaker 1: let me go on and do a few minutes, and
Speaker 1: I killed because everybody I knew was in the room, right,
Speaker 1: So I'd make jokes like Maryland's going out with Mitchell
Speaker 1: and Mike doesn't know, and all my friends would be
Speaker 1: like I made fun of the teachers, like common things that.
Speaker 1: So the owner said, well, that was really good, why
Speaker 1: don't you come back tomorrow? So I went back the
Speaker 1: next night. I didn't know anyone. It was a school night.
Speaker 1: I bombed like you have never oh my god, like
Speaker 1: a horrible death. And I went home and I thought,
Speaker 1: I don't want to do that anymore. So I'm watching
Speaker 1: um merv. Griffin and I see Jerry Seinfeld and I
Speaker 1: see him doing is that. It's all going like last
Speaker 1: and I remembered is that, you know there were no
Speaker 1: VCRs then, but I remembered, like you know, my car
Speaker 1: stopped and I opened up the hut and I'm thinking
Speaker 1: what am I looking for? And on off, switch, on off,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking hi, And so I remembered it right.
Speaker 1: The club owner called me again, Richie and said, come back.
Speaker 1: Why don't you come back? You were good that first night.
Speaker 1: And so I come back and I do Signfelds act
Speaker 1: almost verbade him, and I get off stage and Ritchie
Speaker 1: and you know, a bunch of other comics are standing around, said,
Speaker 1: wod you get that material? I said, this guy named
Speaker 1: Jerry who was on MERV Griffin yesterday. They go, You're
Speaker 1: not allowed to do that. I'm like, why not? They
Speaker 1: you have to write your own jokes and like, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, Strician doesn't write her own song. Did you
Speaker 1: do well? Did the audience like? And they didn't you
Speaker 1: hear those? Because they were laughing jokes a joke. I
Speaker 1: have to write the jokes and nuts. Harold Arlen wrote
Speaker 1: that song that stuff, and so you know that. Then
Speaker 1: I they say, well, why don't you just hang around
Speaker 1: here and uh, you can watch. So I started watching, right,
Speaker 1: I started going there almost every night watching comics. The
Speaker 1: crowd like, well, back then he was sort of the
Speaker 1: Heyday was starting with the Heyday, like Eddie Murphy had
Speaker 1: just gotten on Saturday Night Live. So somebody from our
Speaker 1: little club broke out to the big time. And comedy
Speaker 1: clubs were kind of hot in the eighties, you know,
Speaker 1: I sort of yeah, I hate the wave at the
Speaker 1: exactly the right time. One Michael said that to me once.
Speaker 1: He said that when Saturday Night Live started back then
Speaker 1: in the mid seventies. He said, they were like six
Speaker 1: comedy clubs in the United States exactly, and you knew
Speaker 1: every stand up working. There was a time when I
Speaker 1: started where I knew every female comics working working in
Speaker 1: the country, right, And everybody knew each other, and everybody
Speaker 1: would help each other out. Hey, there's a club Tickles
Speaker 1: and War in Ohio. I can talk to the guy
Speaker 1: for you. You wouldn't have to audition because you knew
Speaker 1: somebody who went there. And a lot of times I'd
Speaker 1: go to the clubs and they pick you up in
Speaker 1: the car at the airport and they'd have a sign
Speaker 1: and they'd be driving you back to the comedy condo
Speaker 1: and the guy go, you know, you know the fourth
Speaker 1: girl I had, the last three sucked if you went
Speaker 1: good him the nether book and a girl again. I
Speaker 1: was like, no pressure, you know, just my entire gender
Speaker 1: is writing on this. So um, you know. The kite
Speaker 1: comic called me and said come back, and then I did.
Speaker 1: I was hanging out there and then I would do
Speaker 1: open Mic Night. So Shirley Hempill, do you remember what's happening?
Speaker 1: Big heavy Black Lady should play? Okay, she was the headliner.
Speaker 1: Now that was a big deal in nineteen eighty. Right,
Speaker 1: she's the headliner and she's they are a day early
Speaker 1: watching open Mic Night. I come off the stage. She
Speaker 1: comes over to me. She goes, little one, little one,
Speaker 1: come here. I said, yeah, Now, I'm an eighteen year
Speaker 1: old kid, alec, but I look about fourteen, right, and
Speaker 1: she says, um, you're funny. Come with me. She takes
Speaker 1: me in through the kitchen to Richie's office and says
Speaker 1: I want her to open for me this weekend and
Speaker 1: he goes, no way, she's too new, she doesn't have
Speaker 1: any act. She says, I wanted to m C. I
Speaker 1: wanted to open and do every show, and I want
Speaker 1: you to pay her twenty five bucks a night. There
Speaker 1: was a hundred dollars. I was eighteen and in high school.
Speaker 1: I thought my head was gonna exactly, my head was
Speaker 1: gonna explode. And so she really helped my career. I
Speaker 1: started doing on and then I never stopped. And you
Speaker 1: did that until Star Search was two, when you were
Speaker 1: on right now, obviously this idea of the Talent Search show,
Speaker 1: this goes back to Leonard Sillman on Broadway years. I mean,
Speaker 1: this has been forever. And then then of course there's
Speaker 1: a renaissance of this now with the voice and this
Speaker 1: in the hand and the foot and the tongue and
Speaker 1: every of the show. What was that like back then
Speaker 1: for you? Well, it was unbelievable because unlike huge and
Speaker 1: unlike today where there are so many media platforms and
Speaker 1: there are so many shows like it, we had four channels,
Speaker 1: five maybe, and I remember my nana whenever somebody was on,
Speaker 1: like Tody Fields was on MERV Griffin or the Don
Speaker 1: Ho Show which was on twelve and the f I'd
Speaker 1: have my nana press play and record on the cassette player,
Speaker 1: so I could listen to Tody Fields on the shows
Speaker 1: that I would miss at school. And I think back
Speaker 1: about that now and it's kind of trippy. The TV
Speaker 1: was the fireplace. Oh my god, totally. So what happened
Speaker 1: was Star Search was so popular and I was on
Speaker 1: the second season. Comics had two minutes a hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty seconds to do materials. You have a clean routine,
Speaker 1: Always have a clean routine. Oh no, not in clubs necessarily.
Speaker 1: But I hadn't, you know, enough stuff. The problem was
Speaker 1: I kept winning, So I had enough clean material for
Speaker 1: like five weeks, and then I kept winning. So I
Speaker 1: called up comics who are my friends, and said, can
Speaker 1: I use that bit? About this? Can I use that?
Speaker 1: And they a lot of them said yes, you know,
Speaker 1: Jeanette Barber, let me use a lot of bits, Carol Henry,
Speaker 1: let me use bits. And you know, I had people
Speaker 1: trying to help me. And so then I lost, and
Speaker 1: I eventually, but I won like god like. It was
Speaker 1: like twelve thousand dollars or like fourteen thousand dollars, and
Speaker 1: I remember thinking I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: I went for the final a hundred thousand dollar thing,
Speaker 1: and I lost, and I remember never being so nervous
Speaker 1: in my life. You know, TV was so different back then.
Speaker 1: In they put you up at the Sunset Strip, right,
Speaker 1: it was at Sunset and Vine where they filmed it.
Speaker 1: And I didn't have any money, right, they'd give you
Speaker 1: per diem, but I didn't know to get per diem.
Speaker 1: So I had all that I had in my talk.
Speaker 1: It was like, you know, forty dollars. So I'd walk
Speaker 1: every day to Carney's. You know that hot dogs cheer
Speaker 1: on Sunset and for a dollar forty you could get fries,
Speaker 1: a small coat, and a hot dog. And that's all
Speaker 1: I had. That's welcome her back. Here's Rosie oh Donald.
Speaker 1: So it's so funny. You watch it. You watch me
Speaker 1: losing weight every single week because I didn't. I didn't really,
Speaker 1: you know, But I ended up winning all this money
Speaker 1: and I went from being an opening act to being
Speaker 1: a headliner from Star Start Overnight. But it really did
Speaker 1: help my career doing Star Starch. After I did the show,
Speaker 1: I was up for partner movie. I said, you can
Speaker 1: have the part. Can you drop the New York accent?
Speaker 1: I said sure, But the only way I can drop
Speaker 1: the New York accent is if I opened my eyes
Speaker 1: really wide and actually think about everything I'm saying. The
Speaker 1: only problem is I can't act this way. The only
Speaker 1: thing I could be is a contestant in the Miss
Speaker 1: America paget and then you get into the movie business.
Speaker 1: Then I become a VJ. I do star Search, and
Speaker 1: then I do give me a break. What happened was
Speaker 1: I was at a comedy club and Lauren Michaels was there,
Speaker 1: was Share and Brandon Tarnikoff, and it's called Bigby's Comedy
Speaker 1: Clubs okay, and Dana Carvey was was auditioning to get
Speaker 1: on SNL and I was the next comic up and
Speaker 1: the waitress is one of my friends. And they said,
Speaker 1: we're not dropping the check until after your set. So well, Brandon,
Speaker 1: and they wanted the check because they had seen Dana
Speaker 1: I was on and I killed right now. It's I
Speaker 1: had a decade under my belt of doing stand up right,
Speaker 1: so um. They came up to me after the show,
Speaker 1: Brandon Tarnikoff, and said, Hi, I want you to call
Speaker 1: this number at NBC tomorrow. We have a job for you.
Speaker 1: And I called My sister was like three in the
Speaker 1: morning New York time, I said, I got on SNL. Oh,
Speaker 1: my god, Brandon Tarnikoff was here with Lauren Michael's and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be on SNL. And I walk in the
Speaker 1: next day to NBC and they said, we're gonna put
Speaker 1: you on Give Me a Break, and I was like, now,
Speaker 1: I was still thrilled to be on TV, and so
Speaker 1: that was the show. I did about ten episodes of
Speaker 1: that in the last season with a very unhappy nel Carter,
Speaker 1: which was a very shocking thing to me because I
Speaker 1: had this image that everybody on TV was friendly and
Speaker 1: happy and it was utopia, and I had seen her
Speaker 1: in Broadway and Bubbling Ground and Bubbling Brown Shot as
Speaker 1: well up Town. But that was my first thing I
Speaker 1: did Give Me a Break. After that, that was eighty six,
Speaker 1: and then eighty eight. They were auditioning VJs for v
Speaker 1: H one and at the improv with Budd Freedman, and
Speaker 1: I went there and I did my set and the
Speaker 1: guy came out and he said, you're really good, but
Speaker 1: you don't really look like MTV, and I said, I
Speaker 1: know when he goes, but we have another station, v
Speaker 1: H one, And at that time it was reda Coolidge,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember. And so he said,
Speaker 1: you wanted an audition for that, you'd have to fly
Speaker 1: yourself to New York. I said, all right, So I
Speaker 1: flew my wedding nine times a day, exactly right. And
Speaker 1: they said, you know you can audition. So I went
Speaker 1: on camera and I auditioned and went home to l A.
Speaker 1: And then I wrote him a thank you note, Steve Leeds,
Speaker 1: I said, thanks for the shot. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: And he was so moved that somebody wrote him a
Speaker 1: thank you note that he sent the tape over to
Speaker 1: the v A one people. The guy who was hiring
Speaker 1: is named Ed Harrington, very Irish guy. He saw Rosie
Speaker 1: O'Donnell and they hired me. So it was a thank
Speaker 1: you note that got me told I did that for
Speaker 1: about two years that it was because it seems like
Speaker 1: for the person who wanted to the clams on the
Speaker 1: hashell career, you meander and you here and here where
Speaker 1: it takes you. What was it like for you to
Speaker 1: be doing that? Well? Everyone everyone said not to do it.
Speaker 1: People who were quote unquote advising my career, like Bud
Speaker 1: Freeman or you know, I didn't even have an agent.
Speaker 1: Really that because I knew it was in twenty three
Speaker 1: million homes, and I thought that it would teach me
Speaker 1: how to be conversational versus presentational. Presentational is what you
Speaker 1: do with stand up. You've already prepared it. It's a
Speaker 1: wrapped package. They undo the bow, they undo the thing, Bloom,
Speaker 1: there's the joke, right, But this is more conversational. Can
Speaker 1: you carry on a conversation with a camera and treat
Speaker 1: it like a person? And I thought it was a
Speaker 1: skill that would really help me. And I also thought
Speaker 1: that many millions of people seeing you, you can't say
Speaker 1: no if you've never seen Elton John and concert, I
Speaker 1: am urging you to do with both at in a
Speaker 1: lot and I love it. I'm going to see him
Speaker 1: Thursday night and my sisters going to see him tonight.
Speaker 1: Was it also about money? It was a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars because I don't want to assume, but are you
Speaker 1: like me where a lot of the decisions I made
Speaker 1: was about money? Yeah, at that time, I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, twenty one maybe and to get a hundred
Speaker 1: grand because I remember saying to them, I'm giving up
Speaker 1: a lot of money to not go on the road
Speaker 1: because I was making good money in the road and
Speaker 1: you would have to definitely cover that, and so they
Speaker 1: came up with a hundred grand. So what I would
Speaker 1: do is it was eight hours a day, but you
Speaker 1: could film that in about two hours. It was four
Speaker 1: breaks an hour at two minutes a break. So they
Speaker 1: would give you the pictures that you had to do, like,
Speaker 1: you know, this is Rosie O'donnald coming at you on
Speaker 1: v H one Video Hits one. The other music television
Speaker 1: that was Whitney Houston, her seven single offer debut album,
Speaker 1: Whitney Houston is doing VH one to Go Go our
Speaker 1: dance show only here on v H one Saturday nights
Speaker 1: eight to eleven. You do have a good memory, but
Speaker 1: that was about fourteen seconds. Now I had a minute
Speaker 1: and a half left to fill and there's nobody but
Speaker 1: me and two cameramen. So my goal was to get
Speaker 1: the cameraman to laugh so that the camera would jiggle, right,
Speaker 1: So that was that was my goal. I want to
Speaker 1: go back and see tape to see if I can
Speaker 1: find that jiggling camera. I bet you can't. I bet
Speaker 1: I can't. Yeah, And so I did that for about
Speaker 1: two years and that's how Penny Marshall saw me. She
Speaker 1: saw you on v H one. I had just gotten
Speaker 1: an agent and I sit next to this woman on
Speaker 1: a plane and coach and she's very bitchy to the
Speaker 1: stewardess and she's saying, I ordered a salad, and I
Speaker 1: start making her laugh. I'm like, here, take my salad,
Speaker 1: give me a dessert. You're such a and I put
Speaker 1: her her luggage and I was just making her laugh, right,
Speaker 1: And so it turns out she's an agent. She's a
Speaker 1: new agent at William Moore. She's Julie Roberts, agent's assistant. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I'm like, wow, that's pretty big for me. So
Speaker 1: I start talking to her and she's like, what are
Speaker 1: you doing. I'm like, I'm going out to audition for
Speaker 1: a game show. And she's like, oh and good luck.
Speaker 1: So I don't see her, you know, I dropped her
Speaker 1: a no to something. And then six months later I
Speaker 1: sit next to her again on another plane. Is that
Speaker 1: the weirdest story? And I she said, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: I said, I got offered wind Lose a drawer for
Speaker 1: kids on Disney. They're gonna pay me fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: A year, five year contract and I'm gonna host that show,
Speaker 1: and she said, you're not. And I'm now your agent,
Speaker 1: and we're too close to God for me not to intervene.
Speaker 1: And it's too weird to sit next to you twice.
Speaker 1: What's her name, Reesa Shapiro, of course? And does she
Speaker 1: remain your agent for how long? She did? For probably
Speaker 1: twenty years and then um, she sort of what happened
Speaker 1: to you know, William Morris? And they all integrated, right,
Speaker 1: and they fired all the women. People say to me,
Speaker 1: why are you so bitter sometimes about Hollywood? I said,
Speaker 1: it's just because it's just it's so foreign to me.
Speaker 1: I said, these are the guys who they could come
Speaker 1: into my house Millon and rape my mother and torture
Speaker 1: my mother, and then six weeks later to call you
Speaker 1: and they'll go, listen, I know I raped your mother
Speaker 1: and I tortured your mother. But I've got a script.
Speaker 1: It's a great part for you. I mean, come on, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I have a really interesting thing that reminds
Speaker 1: me of I did a movie for Hallmark called Riding
Speaker 1: the Bus with my sister, and Angelica Houston directed it,
Speaker 1: and she's an amazing director. And I love her as
Speaker 1: a person. It was done, and she handed in her
Speaker 1: cut and apparently Hallmark didn't like it, so they recut
Speaker 1: it and they sent it to me and they said,
Speaker 1: if you sign off on this cut, we'll go over
Speaker 1: Angelica's head and we'll do an Emmy campaign for you
Speaker 1: to be nominated for this much money. And I said,
Speaker 1: do you realize that that is Hollywood Royalty, that is
Speaker 1: John Houston's daughter. Do you get that she's an Academy
Speaker 1: Award winner and you're a corporate guian a suit who's
Speaker 1: not an artist. What are you doing? So I said no,
Speaker 1: and she called me. She was crying on the way
Speaker 1: to the meeting. She said, you know you should be
Speaker 1: dipped in gold o'donnald and she goes, not many people
Speaker 1: in Hollywood would do that, which even made me sat
Speaker 1: her like that not many people would do that, But
Speaker 1: you're on the pla Esa Shapiro says, no way, you're doing.
Speaker 1: What happens and she um becomes my agent. She gets
Speaker 1: a phone call, HI, do you represent that VJ? Can
Speaker 1: she play baseball? She calls me up. She says, can
Speaker 1: you play baseball? And baseball? I said, if there's one
Speaker 1: thing I can do better than Julia Roberts, it's baseball.
Speaker 1: And so I went and I auditioned for the movie.
Speaker 1: You had to play baseball to even get a reading,
Speaker 1: and I, of course I'm very good at baseball. So um,
Speaker 1: then it was Penny calling back. But anyway I went in.
Speaker 1: It was from her seeing me and went in and
Speaker 1: got the part. And then not Madonna, what's your first movie? Right? Oh? No,
Speaker 1: my first movie was with your brother? I have forgot
Speaker 1: about that car fifty four? Where are you with? With Daniel?
Speaker 1: With Daniel? Right? Well, when I was a j but
Speaker 1: you but you omit that you left that out, which
Speaker 1: I do as well. I did a movie which I
Speaker 1: pretend that didn't happen. Yeah, I almost forget it happened.
Speaker 1: I literally on my resume there's a movie I have
Speaker 1: just deleted it. Yeah. And when people will say, what's
Speaker 1: the first movie you made, I say, she's having a
Speaker 1: baby with John Hughes and lo, that's not necessarily true,
Speaker 1: because mine this movie, and I go, no, I didn't, Well,
Speaker 1: this movie was not released, right. So when the time
Speaker 1: that I did League of Their Own, League of their
Speaker 1: Own came out first because they held it on the shelf,
Speaker 1: and then after the success of like the flint Stones
Speaker 1: and Sleepless and League, then they released Everywhere You're going.
Speaker 1: You're showing up obviously with stand up and then you're
Speaker 1: making the guys laughing, jiggl the camera and there's a
Speaker 1: velocity and a pace and an energy to what you're doing.
Speaker 1: And now you're making movies. And does that become a
Speaker 1: different muscle for you? Do you sit there and go, man,
Speaker 1: this is slow and boring. Yes, But I love the camaraderie.
Speaker 1: I love your set of League their own with all
Speaker 1: the people playing baseball and oh no, it's the actors,
Speaker 1: the camera guys and like you know, all of the
Speaker 1: crew doing the thing where they picked the cards and
Speaker 1: for my family exactly, and it was so loving and
Speaker 1: so beautiful and stand up. You're alone. You're going on
Speaker 1: these clubs. You know, for ten years, fifteen years, I
Speaker 1: was alone on the road. You know, I'd go by myself.
Speaker 1: I had to get in a plane and I'd fly
Speaker 1: to someplace in the middle of the country and they
Speaker 1: picked me up. Feel homeless, yeah, and you feel lonely
Speaker 1: in a minute. Rosie o'donnald recalls her reaction when Ellen
Speaker 1: Degenerous told her she was coming out of the closet
Speaker 1: on her sitcom Ellen, and I remember thinking, why the
Speaker 1: hell is she doing this? She's going to ruin her
Speaker 1: entire career in her life. I'm Alec Baldwin and here's
Speaker 1: the thing. Take a listen to our archive more in
Speaker 1: depth conversations with artists, policymakers, and performers like Stacy Keach.
Speaker 1: I think the hardest thing about Hamlet is is, you know,
Speaker 1: is after that amazing duel in the last act when
Speaker 1: when he dies, you know is not to be called
Speaker 1: breathing on stage. Here from Stacy and fellow actor Michael
Speaker 1: Douglas that here's the thing. Dot Org, this is Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. Rosie o'donnald
Speaker 1: claims she had a career in film simply because she
Speaker 1: could play baseball. That she was the only actress in
Speaker 1: Hollywood who could throw from third to first. Best player
Speaker 1: on the team, Thank you. Rosie played Doris Murphy in
Speaker 1: A League of their own, fictionalized account of the real
Speaker 1: life All American Girls Professional Baseball League. The film was
Speaker 1: a huge break for Rosie when they said that Madonna
Speaker 1: was going to be playing my best friend. You know,
Speaker 1: we had all been cast and Penny said that to me,
Speaker 1: she's going to come in. You have to make a
Speaker 1: laugh and hopefully she'll do the film. Like I a diarrhea.
Speaker 1: I thought, Madonna, Madonna? How do you be friends with Madonna?
Speaker 1: What the hell? Like? You know? In our lifetime? I'm
Speaker 1: fifty one years old, so we're almost the same age, right,
Speaker 1: And to see her at twenty something explode like she did.
Speaker 1: And I remember she had been friendly with Sandra Bernhard
Speaker 1: a little bit, and as I was a VJ, thinking
Speaker 1: how can you be friends with her? How could somebody
Speaker 1: be friends with like Elvis, like mcdonna? And here I
Speaker 1: am playing her best friends. So I knew when she
Speaker 1: was cast in that role that my career was going
Speaker 1: to take a whole different trajectory because of it. And
Speaker 1: it did. And for you, that experience of working with her,
Speaker 1: it was positive, it was positive, and it was sister
Speaker 1: Lee like know, some people have said to me, I
Speaker 1: thought you guys were lovers. I'm like, are you out
Speaker 1: of your mind? Like you know? Some even Sandra said
Speaker 1: to me, away from Madonna, please, I'm such an Irish
Speaker 1: Catholic girl like you can count on both hands how
Speaker 1: many people have been with my entire fifty one years.
Speaker 1: You know, my friend, I don't. I don't know. It
Speaker 1: never crossed my mind because I met her the day
Speaker 1: after I saw Truth or Dare. And in that movie
Speaker 1: Truth or Dare, she goes to her mother's grave and
Speaker 1: it's her own name on her mother's grave, and my
Speaker 1: mother same experience. My mother's name is minname. So when
Speaker 1: I went to see her grave when I finally got
Speaker 1: my license at seventeen years old, there I saw for
Speaker 1: the first time Roseanne O'Donnell. And it's flippy to think
Speaker 1: to yourself, I know someone else who experienced that same thing.
Speaker 1: So when I met her, I said, I saw your
Speaker 1: movie yesterday, and my mom died when I was little,
Speaker 1: and I'm named after her too, and there and it
Speaker 1: was like, right away we had a sister thing, you know,
Speaker 1: right away going on. Now, Penny's in the kind of
Speaker 1: comedy College of Cardinals. There she did the hit show.
Speaker 1: She's funny as hell. Was she helpful to you as
Speaker 1: a director and she just leave you alone? How how
Speaker 1: did you work as an actor? She was amazing because
Speaker 1: she I love to improvise, and I come to find
Speaker 1: out later in all the movies I did after that
Speaker 1: not every director likes this. But she would go, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: somebody got to go over there, caught a bull full
Speaker 1: and just stay come up with a hot door hope doorway. Now, seriously,
Speaker 1: half the time people didn't understand what she was saying.
Speaker 1: So I'd raised my hand and she got rosy again.
Speaker 1: All right, So my part was not really that big,
Speaker 1: and she kept giving me all this extra stuff to do,
Speaker 1: and if you got one take, she'd go try it again,
Speaker 1: like she'd get the grip. The guy played my dad
Speaker 1: was the grip, and he'd come down and he looked
Speaker 1: irish and older guy, and she said, okay, put a
Speaker 1: hat on him. He'll be your father, and let's talk
Speaker 1: about a steak dinner near the bus go like So
Speaker 1: it was a lot of improvisation, which for me is great,
Speaker 1: like doing you know, curb your enthusiasm like you do
Speaker 1: I know so well. I love that. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: to me the most fun because it's like stand up
Speaker 1: where you can go anywhere and say anything you want.
Speaker 1: Did you go right into another film before League got released? Yes,
Speaker 1: I did. Sleepless in Seattle, and so I did League
Speaker 1: and it wasn't out yet. And then my and now
Speaker 1: a woman who I mean, Penny is discerning, and Penny
Speaker 1: is you know, well regarded as a director and so forth.
Speaker 1: But now you go and work with a woman who
Speaker 1: was the most discerning and it was the most options
Speaker 1: and who I could have cast anybody and had anybody,
Speaker 1: and she chose you. And I'm so intimidated because it's
Speaker 1: Nora Fron and I've read every single thing she ever
Speaker 1: wrote in her life, and I knew about her sister
Speaker 1: and her parents and what they had written. So I
Speaker 1: go into the app Thorpe, into her big, you know
Speaker 1: apartment that has a library full of and I'm looking
Speaker 1: at what book she's reading, and I'm you know, and
Speaker 1: she calls me in and she says hello, and I
Speaker 1: say hello, and I'm still like happy to be there.
Speaker 1: And we clicked right away, and and she's like wow.
Speaker 1: She goes, wait a minute, and she goes and gets
Speaker 1: the script off the facts that Delia had been working
Speaker 1: on and pieces of new scene and she goes read this,
Speaker 1: and I read that, and then I left and I
Speaker 1: called my agent in the car and said, I got
Speaker 1: the job, and she said, you know, this is your
Speaker 1: second movie audition. You don't really understand. You got the
Speaker 1: first one, but you're not probably going to get this.
Speaker 1: And I said, no, I got the job. And I did.
Speaker 1: And the reason Nora told me was that night at dinner,
Speaker 1: she said, oh, I I interviewed this girl today. I
Speaker 1: think I might hire her. Name's Rosie O'Donnell. And her son, Jacob,
Speaker 1: who was ten at the time, who was a Madonna freak,
Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, mom, I know her. And
Speaker 1: he ended up being a gay man now who was
Speaker 1: a writer at the the Times right, a great guy.
Speaker 1: And and then Nora ended up getting me an apartment
Speaker 1: in the app Thorpe after the movie, and Jacob used
Speaker 1: to come over to my apartment and tell me about
Speaker 1: his being gay and not knowing how to tell his mom,
Speaker 1: and so I sort of helped What did you tell him?
Speaker 1: I helped him come out. His mother knew, but his
Speaker 1: mother said to me, do you think he's gay? I'm like, yes,
Speaker 1: I do, right, And he was like ten or eleven,
Speaker 1: She goes, I think he might be too. I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: he is. Some nights i'd come home when he's like
Speaker 1: fourteen years drunk outside. I'm like, come here, you're gonna
Speaker 1: go up to my apartment. Come with us. I take
Speaker 1: him up to the apartment. I'd call Nora, I'd go
Speaker 1: I have him. I'll bring him back in a little while.
Speaker 1: It was like living in Queens. Everybody knew each other.
Speaker 1: But he was a great kid. And you know, I
Speaker 1: have pictures of him playing with Parker, you know, when
Speaker 1: Parker was a baby, and then I have a picture
Speaker 1: of them when we did Love Laws and what I
Speaker 1: wore at the opening night Parker's six with something standing
Speaker 1: next to Jacob, And it's just so weird how life
Speaker 1: goes like that. I'm not big on the whole gay
Speaker 1: identity thing in terms of you know that that story,
Speaker 1: because I'm sure you've exhausted that. But what I'm curious
Speaker 1: about is how over the ark of a long career
Speaker 1: now that's changed for you. And it was being a
Speaker 1: gay woman, being a gay performer, going back to you
Speaker 1: know it is seventy eight to do at the club
Speaker 1: in Huntington's on through Now it's many many years. It's
Speaker 1: a thirty five years since you were a kid doing
Speaker 1: this stuff. How's that changed? For you. Remarkable the amount
Speaker 1: of change that's happened just in my lifetime. You know.
Speaker 1: I was coming out of therapy two weeks ago in Nyack,
Speaker 1: New York, and I see two high school girls holding
Speaker 1: hands walking through the parking lot and like, I almost
Speaker 1: fill up with you. I stopped them. I said, excuse me. Now,
Speaker 1: they have no idea right there, the there's a cut off.
Speaker 1: My fame is over right now. I know there are
Speaker 1: people who still, but it's not like it was right
Speaker 1: So I said excuse me, and they sort of like,
Speaker 1: what's this old lady's talking to me? I said, I
Speaker 1: just want to tell you that I'm a fifty one
Speaker 1: year old gay woman and as a a woman. To
Speaker 1: see you two girls, what are you in high school?
Speaker 1: They're like, yeah, we're in tenth grade. To see you
Speaker 1: holding hands in the middle of town walking through it
Speaker 1: just it moves me so much. And they're like, oh really,
Speaker 1: oh thanks, all right, see you here. I am like,
Speaker 1: come here, but I don't know. You know, people sort
Speaker 1: of knew that I was gay, in my opinion in
Speaker 1: show business because I never hit it. It's never like
Speaker 1: I pretended to have a boy friend or although people
Speaker 1: say I did that with Tom Cruise, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: a sexual thing with him. I still have a crush
Speaker 1: on him, you know, but it's not like I wanted
Speaker 1: to screw him. I just thought, God, that is a
Speaker 1: that is something about the exactly like to have him,
Speaker 1: you know, with no shirt on, painting something in my house,
Speaker 1: you know, and then leaving after he gave me breakfast
Speaker 1: exactly right, So anyway people knew was what I thought, right.
Speaker 1: But I remember, like when Ellen called me up and said,
Speaker 1: I'm going to have my character Ellen Morgan come out
Speaker 1: as a lesbian on my TV show, and I remember thinking,
Speaker 1: why the hell is she doing this? She's going to
Speaker 1: ruin her entire career and her life. It was such
Speaker 1: a foreign concept. This is pre Will and Grace. Okay,
Speaker 1: no one had ever even considered it. The only people
Speaker 1: who were out were rock stars. There was no actor
Speaker 1: or actress or comedian who was out. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't remember even Charles Nelson. Riley wasn't out. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, certainly gayish people. And I remember thinking she's
Speaker 1: making a huge mistake, you know, And then there was
Speaker 1: that tremendous amount of fall out that happened afterwards. I
Speaker 1: was like, it would pained me for her. It really did.
Speaker 1: Now listen in hindsight, Oh my god, the courage that
Speaker 1: it took for her to do that at the time
Speaker 1: she did it, in the way she did it was
Speaker 1: pretty unbelievable, you know. I I did not possess that,
Speaker 1: And so she did that. And then Will and Grace
Speaker 1: came on, and I remember them telling me at my show, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a new sitcom that's starting. It's about a gay
Speaker 1: man living with a straight girl. And I go, that
Speaker 1: will never work. Remember Love Sydney with Tony Randall. He
Speaker 1: had his dead partner's picture on the mantel and the
Speaker 1: Catholic church was protesting and it was often two weeks.
Speaker 1: And this was Tony Randolph, right, So I thought, that
Speaker 1: will never work. So then Will and Grace comes on.
Speaker 1: Not only does it work, it blows up queer eye
Speaker 1: for the straight guy. It's like the society culture we
Speaker 1: have changed in such a quick amount of time that
Speaker 1: people don't even realize it. You know, to think that
Speaker 1: in my lifetime, in my career, that you can be
Speaker 1: an out performer actor playing against type. Neil Patrick Harris
Speaker 1: playing a womanizer on that show be out married with
Speaker 1: twin boys and it doesn't hurt your career and it
Speaker 1: doesn't do anything to you know. So in a way,
Speaker 1: it's the most beautifully astounding inspirational thing that I can
Speaker 1: think about it in my fifty one years of living now,
Speaker 1: in the time that you from being a young woman
Speaker 1: and a performer in this business and you're making your
Speaker 1: way and you're succeeding, and you're a gay woman, did
Speaker 1: you ever think about marriage, kids, family? Like, when did
Speaker 1: that polaroid begin to become more in focus. I always
Speaker 1: knew I wanted kids, you did always, But I never
Speaker 1: thought I would get married to a man. I mean
Speaker 1: I didn't really accept, of course, but yeah, I would
Speaker 1: not have turned that down. But I know, I just
Speaker 1: you know. I dated one guy when I was twenty
Speaker 1: eight for about a year and a half, two years.
Speaker 1: His name was Mike. We lived together, great guy, six
Speaker 1: ft one or six ft two. I had only dated
Speaker 1: two women before that. I just sort of didn't do
Speaker 1: it at all. It was just like, you know, whatever,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I got a career plan and uh so,
Speaker 1: um I dated this guy, and I remember thinking, maybe
Speaker 1: I'm not gay. Look at this, Maybe I'm not gay.
Speaker 1: But it turned out, you know, I was wrong. So uh,
Speaker 1: that was the only time that I thought to myself, well,
Speaker 1: maybe I am straight. Maybe this I don't know what
Speaker 1: this is. Maybe um you know, because it's it's like
Speaker 1: what people don't understand about homosexuality. It's not that you
Speaker 1: can't have satisfactory sex with the opposite gender. It's just
Speaker 1: that your heart and your soul and your connection and
Speaker 1: your desire for emotional intimacy is only really served by
Speaker 1: somebody of the same set. I've never heard anybody articulated
Speaker 1: that way before ever. Yeah, I've never heard anyone say that.
Speaker 1: I mean, but there was a period. Mike was the name. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you still want with him? Um, not so much. But
Speaker 1: we had been for about ten years. I was half
Speaker 1: a life ago. But did you leave all those people behind?
Speaker 1: Did you shed a skin when you became famous and
Speaker 1: went into the business, Because for me, all my friendships
Speaker 1: began when I got into this business. It's interesting. I
Speaker 1: have two friends, Jeannie and Jackie. They're my friends since
Speaker 1: I was in elementary school and they're still my best friends.
Speaker 1: And the three of us see each other at least,
Speaker 1: you know, Jackie probably twice a week. Jeanie, probably because
Speaker 1: she's out on the island at least once a month,
Speaker 1: and the three of us are like sisters and their family.
Speaker 1: To me, Jackie's mother raised me, you know, after my
Speaker 1: mother died, I would eat dinner at their house like
Speaker 1: five nights a week. She bought me my first bra,
Speaker 1: She bought me, you know, tampons when I needed them
Speaker 1: as a kid. She was a mother, right, So, and
Speaker 1: she's still alive Bernies and so I see Jackie like
Speaker 1: like a sister all the time. But aside from those two,
Speaker 1: I don't see anyone from high school. I don't see
Speaker 1: anyone from my old stomping grounds on Long Island. And
Speaker 1: most of my friends, aside from those two, are friends
Speaker 1: that I am out in this business because it's very
Speaker 1: hard for people to understand it is lonely. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's so lonely, and it's hard to explain it to
Speaker 1: someone else because they it's held up as the be
Speaker 1: all and end all. It's held up as and it
Speaker 1: it really isn't. The reality of it is very different
Speaker 1: than what you expected from it. I'll never forget. This
Speaker 1: is gonna seem mundane, perhaps, but this really defines what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about im. I would be sitting like I'm
Speaker 1: in the Canadian Rocky shooting a movie with Tony Hopkins,
Speaker 1: and I'll never forget my assistant would FedEx me my
Speaker 1: mail and I pick up this thing and it says,
Speaker 1: you know the dates of the Bacon exhibit at the
Speaker 1: met and it's going to close and I'm not going
Speaker 1: to get back there and I'm gonna miss the Bacon exhibit.
Speaker 1: I felt so awful because I thought, I'm missing my life,
Speaker 1: I'm missing everything. Like when I did thirty rock people say,
Speaker 1: why did you love thirty Rockets? Because they would work
Speaker 1: the schedule with me. When you're in the movie business,
Speaker 1: they are so punishingly unempathetic because they got ninety days
Speaker 1: to do it. They've got to get this thing done,
Speaker 1: and cutting days and cutting costs is what they're all back. Well,
Speaker 1: I remember when I was on my talk show when
Speaker 1: you were saying, I really want to get a sitcom.
Speaker 1: I really wanted to a Sitcome with me. Remember we
Speaker 1: were talking about it. I tell you, I said, we're
Speaker 1: gonna do Jackie Gleeson and you're Jackie Gleeson and I'm yeah,
Speaker 1: I said, you're gonna be the brassy, tough character, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be your witherming husband. Right. So I remember
Speaker 1: when people were saying that there was a show thirty
Speaker 1: Rock and Alec Bolan, and some people were saying to me,
Speaker 1: he's not gonna do a sick I'm like, yes he is.
Speaker 1: You know, because I knew because I had spoke, we
Speaker 1: had spoken about it, how taxing it is, and I
Speaker 1: knew what you were craving was some kind of a
Speaker 1: normal schedule, Like a sitcom is the perfect gig for
Speaker 1: every actor. If you could get a thirty minute sitcom,
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, one hour drama is just
Speaker 1: like doing a movie for nine months in a row.
Speaker 1: It's exhausting. In a minute, Rosie o'donald shares what it's
Speaker 1: like to be a new parent in your fifties. I'm
Speaker 1: all ears, this is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
Speaker 1: here's the thing. This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening
Speaker 1: to here's the thing. Rosie O'Donnell has supported kids charities
Speaker 1: for most of her career. At age thirty three, she
Speaker 1: adopted a child of her own, a baby boy, Parker.
Speaker 1: The balancing act between motherhood and career, particularly in the
Speaker 1: entertainment industry, took her by surprise. When Parker was a baby,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't know anyone who went a nanny.
Speaker 1: I grew up like you did. There was an unheard
Speaker 1: of thing. I didn't even know anyone who a babysitter, right, besides,
Speaker 1: somebody would come over for three hours when your parents
Speaker 1: went to you know, red Lobster. So um. I did
Speaker 1: Harry at the Spine, my first movie after he was born,
Speaker 1: and he was about three or four months old, maybe
Speaker 1: five months old, and I took him to Canada to film,
Speaker 1: and I asked my cleaning lady to come with me
Speaker 1: to watch him because I didn't have anybody to help.
Speaker 1: So she came. And the third day that I came
Speaker 1: home from a twelve hour day on the set, he
Speaker 1: wouldn't come to me. I won't come to you, buddy,
Speaker 1: and he would cry. He wouldn't. He was staying with Maria,
Speaker 1: and I remember at that moment, I called my agent
Speaker 1: and said, you need to get me a job that's
Speaker 1: going to keep me in New York because I don't
Speaker 1: want him growing up on movie sets. I want him
Speaker 1: to have his own bedroom. I want him to know
Speaker 1: his cousins. I want him to have a normal life.
Speaker 1: And so that's the reason I did my talk show
Speaker 1: was because I wanted you and I it's a mirror.
Speaker 1: That's why I did thirty Rock and and my daughter
Speaker 1: lived in l A. But I said to Lauren, he said,
Speaker 1: what's it gonna take. I will give you off every
Speaker 1: Monday and every Friday, any weekend you want to go
Speaker 1: to go see your daughter who was in l A.
Speaker 1: Which in the beginning I would do. And then as
Speaker 1: my daughter got older, I mean I stopped going every
Speaker 1: other weekend because like I would drive out there and
Speaker 1: like drive my daughter to a party and drop her off.
Speaker 1: Believe its hell, But when does the moment come You're like,
Speaker 1: let's have the baby, Let's get this pot on the
Speaker 1: stove and get this thing going. What happens? Well, I did, um,
Speaker 1: all those movies in a row, that like the number
Speaker 1: one movie, three summers in a row, right, So first
Speaker 1: I did A League, and then Sleepless in Seattle and
Speaker 1: then the flint Stones. Well that's pretty astonishing, you know,
Speaker 1: especially because I was like, um, those wasn't a trained actress.
Speaker 1: I was a comic writer, didn't even really go to college.
Speaker 1: I went for one year, so I thought that was
Speaker 1: pretty astounding. And um, I wanted to do Broadway and
Speaker 1: Greece was coming out. So I call my agents, said
Speaker 1: I want to go do that. She's like, are you
Speaker 1: kidding me? Or on this role? Movie wise? And I'm like,
Speaker 1: but I really really want to do it. So I'd
Speaker 1: saved a lot of money, you know, I'd spend wisely.
Speaker 1: I'm not like a big don't go buy clothes and
Speaker 1: shoes and stuff, and so I exactly, it's the truth.
Speaker 1: So I went and um auditioned for Greece and I
Speaker 1: got it on Broadway and I said, when I'm done
Speaker 1: with this run, I'm gonna adopt a baby. So I
Speaker 1: was thirty two. How long a year? And can I
Speaker 1: tell you, Alec, dear Lord and heaven. It was like
Speaker 1: groundhog Day the movie, only without Bill Murray. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: it was. I couldn't. I would love to do Broadway again,
Speaker 1: but I would never come in to talk. Yeah, Lord,
Speaker 1: I know, I'm sorry I missed it, but boy, that's something.
Speaker 1: That's something. And uh, so I decided I was going
Speaker 1: to adopt a baby. And it wasn't I wasn't dating anyone.
Speaker 1: Wasn't like you know I was. I saw I was
Speaker 1: seeing a girl who was in the cast of Greece.
Speaker 1: But I it wasn't like we were gonna have kids together.
Speaker 1: I was going to adopt this baby. And she's like, well,
Speaker 1: what about me. I'm like, well, I don't know about you,
Speaker 1: but this is what I'm doing in my life. And
Speaker 1: so I adopted. She's like, well, what would I be
Speaker 1: to him? I don't know what you're gonna be. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like I was doing a week. I was just
Speaker 1: adopting a baby myself. And then I went and did
Speaker 1: Harry at the Spy and said to my agent, I
Speaker 1: got to stay in New York. And at the time
Speaker 1: Kathy Lee was threatening to quit. I said, get me
Speaker 1: that gig with Reach and they said, oh, she's staging,
Speaker 1: but they are willing to give you your own show
Speaker 1: like that, and I said, well, the only thing I
Speaker 1: want to do is MERV Griffin. I just simply rip
Speaker 1: off his show. I would do exactly MERV Griffin, a
Speaker 1: talk show when nobody gets hurt, where everybody's friends, when
Speaker 1: nobody's gonna embarrass anyone. People in Hale Helium you got
Speaker 1: it and yet fun cooking segments and everybody likes each other.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like candalized like right. So I drew the
Speaker 1: set like I said, this is what I want the
Speaker 1: set to look like. I drew where the band was
Speaker 1: supposed to be. I decided I wanted to current like
Speaker 1: I knew exactly what I did the logo myself, like
Speaker 1: I was totally like, here's how you do the club
Speaker 1: all over. I was just gone, he's not coming down here.
Speaker 1: Actually he was around then, and he was so sweet
Speaker 1: to me and Mike Douglas because it was a tribute
Speaker 1: sort of to both of them and Dinah Shore, who
Speaker 1: was gone. But you know, those are the shows I
Speaker 1: watched as a kid. That's funny how when you talked
Speaker 1: to before about a world without VCRs and stuff for
Speaker 1: them when when we were kids, when we watched TV.
Speaker 1: I'd watch Dino Shot Me too. I'd sit in my
Speaker 1: house and be like, I don't know who the hell
Speaker 1: is brought is, but I'm gonna watch because the point
Speaker 1: is what else was there there was? Like those shows?
Speaker 1: Or digest them because it's like, what the hell are
Speaker 1: we gonna do? Mcgilla Garilla that of the Little Rascals, right,
Speaker 1: or you know Kimber the White Lion, remember that speed racer. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I did the pilot and then I went to
Speaker 1: Napty and all of the TV people, which is a
Speaker 1: convention for television executives station owners, and they came and
Speaker 1: they said, well, if it doesn't work, are you gonna
Speaker 1: do like you know Haraldo and Jenny Jones, because those
Speaker 1: were the shows that were number one at the time.
Speaker 1: It was, you know, more format. They were afraid that
Speaker 1: this wouldn't work because it hadn't been on in twenty
Speaker 1: five years, right, And they were afraid that I would
Speaker 1: become just like the other shows where people were punching
Speaker 1: each other and you know this, I had an affair
Speaker 1: with him, and that I would change the genre correct,
Speaker 1: And I said I will never do that. I will
Speaker 1: just walk away before I do that. And they said,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll try it. So they were hesitant, the
Speaker 1: station owners. It's not your baby exactly, everybody, please. I
Speaker 1: couldn't do that, I really could. I don't know how
Speaker 1: they sleep. I watched Morius still on them like THK guy,
Speaker 1: what to seeing Connie talk about? At night? Okay, today
Speaker 1: I had two treads, vest Night, short people, and they
Speaker 1: had twelve boyfriends. I don't know how many years do
Speaker 1: you do the talk show? Six? I told them. Initially
Speaker 1: I had a baby who was one. I said, I'm
Speaker 1: going to do the show for five years, and then
Speaker 1: I'm quitting before he goes to kindergarten. I said, I
Speaker 1: just want you to know before he starts, like first grade,
Speaker 1: real school, I'm quitting because this is a toxic business.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine what it would do to a kid.
Speaker 1: It's too much for me. And I also knew in
Speaker 1: Success how much money it was. It was an insane
Speaker 1: amount of money. So I told them from the beginning,
Speaker 1: I'm only doing uh five, I was a four year deal.
Speaker 1: I said, I'm only doing four years because he would
Speaker 1: be fun. They said yes. But in year one it
Speaker 1: was such a big hit that they said, please give
Speaker 1: us two more years. Please, We'll give you, you you know,
Speaker 1: the Oprah deal. So I agreed to do six. Now
Speaker 1: in my fifth year, they said, please sign us. That's
Speaker 1: when I begged you to do the Jackie Gleason spa off.
Speaker 1: And you turned to me and said, you leaned into
Speaker 1: me very common. You said, I can't. I'll never forget that.
Speaker 1: You'd lean to me and you said I can't. You said,
Speaker 1: I'm about to sign a deal. I'm gonna make quote
Speaker 1: that sick Oprah money exactly. It was sick Oprah money. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I signed on for two more years, and then
Speaker 1: you know, in the fifth year, they kept saying, you know,
Speaker 1: at one year left, come on, we're gonna offer you this. Honestly,
Speaker 1: the truth is, I felt, if you have a hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars in the bank and you think you need
Speaker 1: a hundred million more, you're missing your life. I had
Speaker 1: three children at the time, right, I had three kids
Speaker 1: under the age of five, and my mother died at forty.
Speaker 1: I was thirty nine. My show ended right when I
Speaker 1: was forty. I thought, any day they're going to diagnose
Speaker 1: me with breast cancer, I'm gonna be gone. I wanted
Speaker 1: to go spend the time raising my children the way
Speaker 1: my mother didn't get to. So there was no amount
Speaker 1: of money. They kept upping the money and upping the money.
Speaker 1: And you know, Dick Robertson, Dick Robinson has said, to me,
Speaker 1: who's still around. The older guy used to work at
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers. He said, never in his life did he
Speaker 1: see somebody walk away from that much money, He said,
Speaker 1: he still doesn't believe sometimes he thinks about that moment,
Speaker 1: you know, because he walked in and he's like, I've
Speaker 1: been authorized to present you with this, you know, and
Speaker 1: thinking I was gonna go, well, okay, but when you
Speaker 1: walked away from that, because this is something that I
Speaker 1: wrestled with. Sometimes you want to be more proactive and
Speaker 1: involved with your kids. I mean that that's I don't
Speaker 1: don't dispute that. I mean, it's obviously very very important.
Speaker 1: I made a lot of my choices around it as well, like, like,
Speaker 1: beyond this thing of not wanting to have money control
Speaker 1: your life, was it also did you become someone you said,
Speaker 1: I'm sick of her and I'm sick of that, Like
Speaker 1: that's Rosie in one stage of the rocket Ship and
Speaker 1: now I was trying to walk away from them. Yes,
Speaker 1: I had morphed into a different person, right because at
Speaker 1: the beginning of that show, the concept of knowing Barbra
Speaker 1: streisand of knowing Tom Cruise, of knowing you like I
Speaker 1: had worked with the actors I had worked with. I
Speaker 1: knew those people and I was friends with them. But
Speaker 1: that didn't mean that I felt I was part of
Speaker 1: the showbiz community. But when that show took off and
Speaker 1: I had literally interviewed everyone from Walter Cronkite to you know,
Speaker 1: Joan Plowwright like to, you know, everyone was happy to
Speaker 1: be on your show exactly, and it was you know,
Speaker 1: it was the first one of its kind. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of them now, and you know, Ellen has has
Speaker 1: done it amazingly well. And she had all of my
Speaker 1: same producers, she had Jim Teratory, she had the same team,
Speaker 1: and she went and she did it. And I think
Speaker 1: she's very good at it, you know, I really do.
Speaker 1: But I know that I could not have done it
Speaker 1: any longer than I did it. I knew I was
Speaker 1: not a marathon. And then when you stopped what happened,
Speaker 1: I was, um. I felt free. First of all, I
Speaker 1: had just sort of come out right. I had written
Speaker 1: my first book and it talked about my being gay
Speaker 1: and all of the struggles that I had with how
Speaker 1: to how to announce that. And I did it in
Speaker 1: conjunction with an A c l U case about force
Speaker 1: to care because I was a foster parent and blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. So I didn't want it just to be
Speaker 1: about hey, like, let's talk about my sex life and
Speaker 1: sexual preference. You know, I wanted it to be about
Speaker 1: something more. So there was a case with the Loft
Speaker 1: and Crew tou case down in Florida to men who
Speaker 1: had adopted this children and they cyril converted from HIV
Speaker 1: positive to negative because both men were nurses and they
Speaker 1: wanted to take the kids away after they ciril converted.
Speaker 1: So I, actually, there's there was a law at the
Speaker 1: time in Florida that gay people could not adopt, even
Speaker 1: the force to chieved children they raised. So I I
Speaker 1: went through this lawsuit and well the book came out
Speaker 1: three months after nine eleven, so it was sort of
Speaker 1: like nobody really cared nine eleven happened. And thank god
Speaker 1: I was off the following May because I did not
Speaker 1: think and I think there was some you know, intervention
Speaker 1: from above that I was off during the Bush administration.
Speaker 1: I think I would have probably lost my mind on
Speaker 1: national television, you know, when I could not believe when
Speaker 1: my show was off and we were going into war,
Speaker 1: going to Afghanistan, like and Phil Donoghue was on again,
Speaker 1: and you know, I I spray painted no war on
Speaker 1: the back of my denom jacket. I could Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't believe now aproposal
Speaker 1: that I mean, obviously you like me, you don't hesitate
Speaker 1: to speak your mind. Now you went from being ubiquitous
Speaker 1: the show and so forth, And do you enjoy that
Speaker 1: now where you don't you're not out there and you're
Speaker 1: not an opinion maker. Yes, but the fall between one
Speaker 1: and the other extreme was intense and sharp and shocking. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I when I was on the cover of
Speaker 1: news Week, you know, when my show premiered, said the
Speaker 1: Queen of Nice, I remember holding it up on on
Speaker 1: live TV and saying, this is gonna bite me in
Speaker 1: the as one day, because you know what, I'm not
Speaker 1: that nice. If you ever saw my stand up BacT,
Speaker 1: I go after people and issues that I find abhorrent
Speaker 1: and repulsive, and I present them in a comical way
Speaker 1: that makes you laugh and yet think. So I knew
Speaker 1: that that was never ever the totality of who I was.
Speaker 1: So um, I was not you know, naive enough to
Speaker 1: think that I was going to slimply glide slowly down
Speaker 1: towards the anonymity, you know. Uh, but it was very,
Speaker 1: very harsh and it was very very quick, and it
Speaker 1: was a very big shock. Also, I was sued by
Speaker 1: the magazine company. And when you're sued by a corporation, right,
Speaker 1: I was sued for three million dollars right by this
Speaker 1: corporation they I when my show was ending, I was
Speaker 1: convinced to do a magazine like Oprah did with my
Speaker 1: name on it, Rosie, and I was totally had creative
Speaker 1: control and they had the sales kind of control. What
Speaker 1: happened was after my show ended, the guy who worked
Speaker 1: there said, well, you signed a stupid contract and your
Speaker 1: lawyers weren't good. And I owned the show and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do what I want and fired the staff. And
Speaker 1: UM wanted to do like thinner thighs in thirty days
Speaker 1: and all the things that are not met. And I said,
Speaker 1: well you can't do that, and he said, well, you
Speaker 1: didn't see this loophole in the contract. So I remember
Speaker 1: saying to UM, my friends are to some learned people
Speaker 1: I knew who is the toughest and the best female
Speaker 1: lawyer in New York And they said Mary Joe White
Speaker 1: and Mary Joe White, who brought down the first bombers
Speaker 1: at the nine eleven. The Khalid Khalil Khalior, whatever his
Speaker 1: name is, and she has just been appointed with the
Speaker 1: Obama administration. She's like a huge mockey. Mark Well. I
Speaker 1: went into her office on a Saturday. She had shorts
Speaker 1: on and a T shirt, and I gave her the
Speaker 1: contract and I said, now I want to ask you
Speaker 1: and my writer. Am I wrong? She said, well, you're right,
Speaker 1: and I said, She goes, but I don't know that
Speaker 1: means you're gonna win. I said, but I am right.
Speaker 1: What I'm saying is right that this man cannot take
Speaker 1: what I've worked for for twenty years, my name and
Speaker 1: what it represents, and reform at him because I signed
Speaker 1: a contract. Susanne Summers correct or, who actually like and
Speaker 1: think is very were more like, make me into a
Speaker 1: Cosmo girl, right, And she said, no, you're right, and
Speaker 1: if you're tough enough, you'll win. But they're going to
Speaker 1: put you through hell. And they did. I was like
Speaker 1: on the cover of the Post like nine three times.
Speaker 1: And when you came out of it, you prevailed. Yes,
Speaker 1: But it was exhausting, extensive and painful litigation. It certainly was.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to run out of time, so I
Speaker 1: want to say two things. And I want to say
Speaker 1: this carefully because this is not about personal animus or
Speaker 1: somebody who pissed you off. What's one thing you were
Speaker 1: involved in that you went to the map cause wise
Speaker 1: or something or an event, something you really went out
Speaker 1: there and was the most outrageous that made you the
Speaker 1: most indignant. You know, I think it would probably be
Speaker 1: um the right of gay people to adopt in Florida.
Speaker 1: We actually did a canvassing of the state of Florida
Speaker 1: back and you know, in the nineties when my show
Speaker 1: was on, because I thought, if we're gonna fight this,
Speaker 1: we're gonna lobby, let's try to see what the what
Speaker 1: the temperature is of the state and found a surprising amount,
Speaker 1: like disproportionately large amount of people would prefer that children
Speaker 1: had no parents than gay parents. That was at the
Speaker 1: time in the nineties. Now, look how things have changed now,
Speaker 1: right that the ruling has been overturned, and you know,
Speaker 1: gays are allowed to adopt in pretty much every state
Speaker 1: I think at this point, and we're allowed to get
Speaker 1: married and we're allowed so a lot has changed since then,
Speaker 1: but that was quite disheartening at the time. I think. Also,
Speaker 1: you know what my saying that I do not believe
Speaker 1: the official story of nine eleven has brought a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of angst into my life. And I don't accuse
Speaker 1: anyone specifically or say that I know any answers. I
Speaker 1: simply say it defies the laws of physics. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're here, we are. It's the fiftieth anniversary of JFK's assassination,
Speaker 1: and people still don't want to talk about that. Well,
Speaker 1: and that's when when people come over to me and say,
Speaker 1: I won't talk to you about nine eleven, I said,
Speaker 1: before we have the conversation, I just want to ask
Speaker 1: you one thing, who killed John Kennedy? And if they
Speaker 1: say Lee Harvey Oswald, I said, then we're not going
Speaker 1: to have a conversation. But if they you know, because honestly,
Speaker 1: you either have the benevolent father image in your mind
Speaker 1: and you can't right. It's the cognitive dissidence, right, You
Speaker 1: can't hold two opposing ideas in your brain at one time.
Speaker 1: You can love the United States of America, right, and
Speaker 1: I love my country and therefore I want to seek
Speaker 1: exactly right. And therefore democracy demands dissent. And if you
Speaker 1: have questions, that's part of being and you and I
Speaker 1: have shared that we're people doubt our patriotism because we're
Speaker 1: critically I'm going to go off Twitter. It's too much negativity,
Speaker 1: and it's too much negativity that I don't get in
Speaker 1: real life. I can walk anywhere even to like, you know,
Speaker 1: my son goes to a military school. These are all Republicans.
Speaker 1: These are you know, hello, miss o'donald, thank you. You know,
Speaker 1: like unbelievably crimes people in the world. I experience of
Speaker 1: Twitter correct, and that's what it is. It's like standing
Speaker 1: on a stage in a dark and comedy club and
Speaker 1: people throwing shit at you and you're still trying to
Speaker 1: do your act. I want to close with one thing,
Speaker 1: and that is I watch people who are virtuosic musicians.
Speaker 1: I mean, I do this announcing for the New York Philharmonic.
Speaker 1: I just went to Long Longs benefit on Monday at
Speaker 1: Carnegie Hall. I have this tremendous, tremendous, almost insatiable appetite
Speaker 1: for the classical repertoire and the people who play it well.
Speaker 1: And and I think to myself, you know, where is
Speaker 1: that and what we do? Like acting? Those people talk
Speaker 1: about Olivier and Kevin Klein and you know, and Colin
Speaker 1: Firth and all. They're really really beautifully etched actors of
Speaker 1: their day. And then I think about you, and I
Speaker 1: think about to be able to talk on a talk
Speaker 1: show and be able to communicate the way you did.
Speaker 1: You remind me in the conversational mode of a classical
Speaker 1: piano player, because you can touch, you can do anything,
Speaker 1: you can play anything. You are funny as hell, You're tough,
Speaker 1: you're smart, you are so many things. You could have
Speaker 1: done anything. You're so tenacious, and you're so smart. If
Speaker 1: this hadn't worked out for you, what was among the fallbacks?
Speaker 1: What might you have done with your life of you
Speaker 1: didn't do this. I never had a fallback on purpose,
Speaker 1: and my dad used to say that all the time,
Speaker 1: you need a fallback, But I knew that this career
Speaker 1: was so difficult to succeed in that if you had
Speaker 1: a fallback, you would fall back. So I didn't have one. However,
Speaker 1: I know I would have been a teacher, because it
Speaker 1: was teachers who saved my life. We were in an
Speaker 1: abusive all my dad had some issues after my mother.
Speaker 1: I didn't even before, and it was teachers in the
Speaker 1: public school system who saved my life. Literally, I don't
Speaker 1: think I would be here. I don't think. You know,
Speaker 1: when my grandmother died, who who had lived with us
Speaker 1: after when my mother had died, you know, when she
Speaker 1: died when I was in high school, all the teachers
Speaker 1: came to the funeral, all the like we were. We
Speaker 1: were five orphan children pretty much who were embraced and
Speaker 1: taken in by the teachers in our communities. And I
Speaker 1: definitely would have been a teacher. I love kids, and
Speaker 1: it shows. Rosie's fifth child, Dakota, was born this past January.
Speaker 1: Her oldest, Parker, was seventeen at the time. Honey, it's
Speaker 1: a different gig. Oh my god. First of all, it's
Speaker 1: so much calmer. You're so much more relaxed. You're enjoy
Speaker 1: every moment so much more like this baby. First of all,
Speaker 1: she's a dream. She she wakes up and she goes
Speaker 1: to bed at nine o'clock after bottle, wakes up at six,
Speaker 1: give her a bottle, and she sleeps in the bed
Speaker 1: with us till about every night. That's you know. And Michelle,
Speaker 1: my wife, this is our first kid, goes, let's get
Speaker 1: another one. I'm like, you're out of your mind. They
Speaker 1: don't come like this normally. No, She's just it's a
Speaker 1: dream and I feel younger because of it. I feel
Speaker 1: like that my design, oh my god, I like it,
Speaker 1: like turned on every creative. It's just it rebirthed me.
Speaker 1: It rebirthed me in a way that I was not expecting,
Speaker 1: and I'm so thankful for There's something about this experience.
Speaker 1: Uh that's very different from the other kids. You know,
Speaker 1: when you your first baby. I always say, the other
Speaker 1: kids never get what that first kid got. And I'm
Speaker 1: not the first kid in my family right my brother
Speaker 1: Eddie is so in a way, this baby feels like
Speaker 1: the first kid all over again. Rosie O'Donnell entertainer, activist, philanthropist,
Speaker 1: extraordinaire and above all a mom to five with some
Speaker 1: good hand me downs. I suspect thank you for doing this,
Speaker 1: and I love you and I love you too, and
Speaker 1: I'm sending you so many baby things. Don't buy everything,
Speaker 1: because I have a lot of extra. Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: You can hear more in depth conversations in our archive
Speaker 1: from Brian Williams to Chris Rock. I don't know about you.
Speaker 1: I find a business a lot smaller, less movies, less
Speaker 1: I mean less stuff that relates to me. You know what,
Speaker 1: less stuff that relates to me. I'll say that I'm
Speaker 1: a very emotional guy, and I often get a catch
Speaker 1: in my voice. I'm a very patriotic guy. I kind
Speaker 1: of have a little schmaltz in me. I guess. Listen
Speaker 1: to more and Here's the Thing dot Org. Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing is produced by Emily Botine and Kathy Russo with
Speaker 1: Chris Bannon, Jim Briggs and Herbsman, Melanie Hoops, Monica Hopkins,
Speaker 1: Trey k Sharon Machee, and Lou Okowski. Thanks to Larry
Speaker 1: Josephson and the Radio Foundation, This is alec old one
Speaker 1: and you're listening to Here's the Thing.