Speaker 1: She called me about ten years after we did League
Speaker 1: of their own, So, you know, twenty years ago, twenty
Speaker 1: five years ago, mame and she said to me, Rosie,
Speaker 1: can you play soccer? I said, what can you play soccer?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I never It wasn't my sport truthfully,
Speaker 1: too much running. I didn't like it. I had to sit.
Speaker 1: But you know, yeah, I know how to play soccer.
Speaker 1: Why She's like, well, there's a team in Mexico. Great story.
Speaker 1: You could be the lady. I go, I'm Rosie o'donnald.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be the Mexican woman on the soccer coach.
Speaker 1: But she was always trying to like get everybody back
Speaker 1: together and do it again. And you know, do you
Speaker 1: play soccer? Hi? This is Rosie o'donnald and I have
Speaker 1: a cold.
Speaker 2: Soar friends, Welcome to this week's episode of Off the Beat.
Speaker 2: I am, as always, your humble host, Brian Baumgartner. Today's guest, Well,
Speaker 2: she needs no introduction. I'm going to give one anyways,
Speaker 2: but I just want you to know I am so
Speaker 2: excited to welcome the legendary Rosie O'Donnell to the podcast. Honestly,
Speaker 2: it would be much easier for me to tell you
Speaker 2: what Rosie hasn't done in the entertainment business than to
Speaker 2: list her her countless huge projects from the last what
Speaker 2: four decades. I mean, maybe you know Rosie from some
Speaker 2: of the tiny movies she's done, you know, a League
Speaker 2: of their own, Sleepless in Seattle, Or perhaps you're more
Speaker 2: familiar with her stand up career, or from her years
Speaker 2: doing the iconic Rosie O'Donnell show. The Queen of Nice
Speaker 2: is also the Queen of candid. To be clear, She's
Speaker 2: also responsible for some of the biggest philanthropic efforts in
Speaker 2: the history of show business and was continues to be
Speaker 2: groundbreaking for the LGBTQ plus community around the world. We'll
Speaker 2: hear a lot about that and the impact she has
Speaker 2: made in that community. Look, she's a legend for a reason.
Speaker 2: You might even say that she's in a league of
Speaker 2: her own. Okay, not the best, but I'm trying. This
Speaker 2: is a great conversation. There is so much insider info,
Speaker 2: and if you know anything about Rosie, you should not
Speaker 2: be surprised that she was able to be completely candid, moving,
Speaker 2: and hilarious all at once. So I'm not going to
Speaker 2: make you wait any longer. Here she is Rosie O'Donnell,
Speaker 2: Bubble and squeak.
Speaker 1: I love it, Bubble and Squeakana, Bubble and Squeaker. Cook
Speaker 1: get every mo.
Speaker 2: Lift over from the Nubyo.
Speaker 1: Hi, Rosie, how are you?
Speaker 2: I'm good.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to be doing this.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm so happy that you're here. It's it's a
Speaker 2: little bit of a different environment than Watch What Happens Live.
Speaker 2: The last time I saw.
Speaker 1: You, I know, that was so fun. And I remember
Speaker 1: I said to Laurie, I love that guy. We should
Speaker 1: hang out with him. So this is our first hang.
Speaker 1: Consider this our first hang.
Speaker 2: This will be our first of many, I hope.
Speaker 1: Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2: Congratulations on the new podcast. We're going to talk about
Speaker 2: that in a little bit, but I wanted to start
Speaker 2: back by the way I told you this when I'm
Speaker 2: I'm a huge fan of yours. You're career is well,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's unbelievable and inspiring. I want to get
Speaker 2: into a little bit. When did you first begin to
Speaker 2: have feelings of interest in performing? When you were a kid?
Speaker 1: Pre kindergarten pre kindergarten. Yes, in kindergarten, everybody would do
Speaker 1: show and tell and they would bring in a toy
Speaker 1: and I would go and now I'd like to do
Speaker 1: something from Guys and Dolls, and I would belt out
Speaker 1: a Broadway show song that my mother would listen to
Speaker 1: the original cast recordings all the time. So I knew
Speaker 1: every Broadway show and I wanted to be a performer.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be Barbara streisand I want to be
Speaker 1: Bette Midler. Now the fact that I really couldn't sing
Speaker 1: or dance didn't really, you know, dissuade me. I was
Speaker 1: still like, gung ho, let's do this. And the goal
Speaker 1: for me was never Hollywood. It was always Broadway, because
Speaker 1: you know, Hollywood was some imaginary illusion that I mean,
Speaker 1: I had been on a plane and you know, I
Speaker 1: didn't know how to get there, But Broadway I knew
Speaker 1: how to get there, and I knew how to watch
Speaker 1: sweaty people come out of that stage door that I
Speaker 1: just saw on stage, and I'm like, this is the
Speaker 1: destination Broadway. So that's always always what I thought I
Speaker 1: would do. You know, I would have a career as
Speaker 1: a Broadway performer and then maybe producer.
Speaker 2: Did you so you went to a lot of shows
Speaker 2: even as a young Oh yeah, a young kid.
Speaker 1: Okay, yes, yeah, very very often. I would take off
Speaker 1: Wednesday and go on the train into Manhattan and then
Speaker 1: get a ten dollars tk TS seat. Yeah, or the
Speaker 1: when you did they used to do standing room. I
Speaker 1: don't know if they still do that now with COVID,
Speaker 1: but they used to do standing room for for a
Speaker 1: very discounted fee. And and I saw all those hits
Speaker 1: in the seventies. I saw you know, best little whorehouse,
Speaker 1: I saw a Pippin, I saw a horus line, I
Speaker 1: saw you know, they're playing our song, and I loved it.
Speaker 1: I thought it was the most magical part of the world.
Speaker 1: And I came to find out in my career that
Speaker 1: I've been very lucky to do a lot of different
Speaker 1: things in different avenues, and I think the most enjoyable
Speaker 1: for me is definitely Broadway. But it's a young person's
Speaker 1: game because eight shows a week when you're sixty one,
Speaker 1: trying to remember the lines is not what it was
Speaker 1: in my twenties.
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, you know it's funny because you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know if you know this. I started off
Speaker 2: in theater as well, and I thought I thought that
Speaker 2: that was my life, that was all I wanted to
Speaker 2: do as well, and so I was never based in
Speaker 2: New York. I did some shows there, but I was
Speaker 2: sort of on that major regional theater circuit, traveling from
Speaker 2: city to city, Berkeley Rep and the Guthrie and others.
Speaker 2: And I think what you just said is so true.
Speaker 2: It is kind of a young person's game that eight
Speaker 2: shows a week, NonStop. The only day you have off
Speaker 2: is Monday, and nobody else is off on Mondays. It's
Speaker 2: hard to have a life, right.
Speaker 1: Well, you only have your life and your world amongst
Speaker 1: the people who are on your schedule. So it's a
Speaker 1: small community. It's a very connected kind community. Everyone knows
Speaker 1: each other. It's so much more tangible than the vagueness
Speaker 1: of Hollywood success. When you're on Broadway, you know, you
Speaker 1: see the same people when you go out to eat
Speaker 1: in between shows at Joe Allen's, and you know, you
Speaker 1: get your routine and it becomes your life and your world.
Speaker 1: And it is a beautiful part of show business. It's
Speaker 1: the part that kind of moves me the most. When
Speaker 1: you go home after doing a series, go in your bed,
Speaker 1: you go to sleep. It's not the same as live
Speaker 1: performers there with you making a show every night just
Speaker 1: for those sixteen hundred people in the theater. You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're in high school and your dream is to
Speaker 2: be on Broadway. What begins to get you into stand up?
Speaker 1: I did a comedy show where you make fun of
Speaker 1: the teachers, called Senior Follies, Okay, And I would take
Speaker 1: the whole Saturday night live record and I would change
Speaker 1: the names, like you know miss Baron, who was a
Speaker 1: very skinny, flat chested teacher. More on this story as
Speaker 1: it develops, right, I would just change the and I've
Speaker 1: made it all about the teachers. Well, they thought I
Speaker 1: was a genius. They're like, I'm like, don't, don't put
Speaker 1: on that record because I stole everything from there, you know.
Speaker 1: And so I wrote it and I did Rosanne, Rosanna, Dana,
Speaker 1: you haven't nice. You got a little piece of saliva
Speaker 1: and your mom that goes up and down and up
Speaker 1: and and I had a wig on. And this man
Speaker 1: comes over to me, who's about thirty and I'm now sixteen, right,
Speaker 1: and he says, my brother is in this play. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm his older brother. I just opened a comedy club
Speaker 1: out on Huntington, Long Island. Uh, you know, next two
Speaker 1: town over, why don't you come and do some stand
Speaker 1: up And I was like, I don't want to do
Speaker 1: stand up. I want to be on Broadway, right, And
Speaker 1: he was like, well, maybe before you get to Broadway
Speaker 1: you can do a little stand up. And I was like, well,
Speaker 1: i'll try. So I go to this club and it's
Speaker 1: a Saturday night and it's every kid I knew in
Speaker 1: high school that would and I was popular in high school.
Speaker 1: The whole place was packed, and I didn't really have
Speaker 1: an act per se, but I would make fun of
Speaker 1: the people in the audience, like, oh, mindy, you know,
Speaker 1: do you know that your boyfriend Billy made out with
Speaker 1: Lisa Shackner last week? Like it would just be like cobitzing,
Speaker 1: you know. Well, I killed because they thought it was
Speaker 1: hysterical that I was on a comedy club. And well,
Speaker 1: Richie said, why don't you come back tomorrow night? And
Speaker 1: I was like, all right, I'll try it again. Look
Speaker 1: how good I was. The next night was a school
Speaker 1: night and nobody could come, so it was just a
Speaker 1: regular crowd. When I say that I died a death
Speaker 1: on that stage, it was torturous to watch. So I
Speaker 1: get off and Richie goes well, you know, you gotta
Speaker 1: bomb a little bit, kid, you get a little bit.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, okay, all right, I go back and
Speaker 1: he says, I can start working the open mic night
Speaker 1: as the as the MC and you know, not get
Speaker 1: paid really. But I did that and I learned a lot.
Speaker 1: I learned how to do it. And then Shirley Hempill
Speaker 1: from What's Happening, she was the headliner and she saw
Speaker 1: me at the open mic night and she told Richie Menavini, Oh,
Speaker 1: that kid's going to open for me this weekend. And
Speaker 1: he said, she's not ready. I'm not paying her. She's novid.
Speaker 1: She said, well, I won't perform if you don't book
Speaker 1: her and pay her fifty bucks a show. So it
Speaker 1: was like I made three hundred dollars on the weekend.
Speaker 1: I could not believe it. I couldn't believe it. And
Speaker 1: that's how it began, you know. A few years later,
Speaker 1: when I was twenty two, a woman at that same
Speaker 1: comedy club came over to me, and she's in her
Speaker 1: forties and she says, my dad is Ed McMahon, and
Speaker 1: I'm the talent coordinator for Star Search, and we'd like
Speaker 1: you to come on Star Search. I thought, you're not
Speaker 1: Claudia McMahon, you're not his daughters, what would you be
Speaker 1: doing here? Sure enough, that was Claudia McMahon, and it
Speaker 1: was Ed's daughter, and she got me on that show
Speaker 1: where I won five or six weeks in a row
Speaker 1: and made like twenty seven hundred dollars each time I won.
Speaker 1: I was rolling in it right, and I ended up
Speaker 1: not winning the year but the final one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars prize. But I got to a point where now
Speaker 1: I was known enough to be a headliner. So by
Speaker 1: twenty two after that show was on, I was headlining
Speaker 1: all over the country in small venues like little clubs,
Speaker 1: you know, but still it was it was a living
Speaker 1: for sure. I could make a living. And that's how
Speaker 1: it began.
Speaker 2: So when you say I'm going I want to go
Speaker 2: back just a teeny bit. But you were m seeing
Speaker 2: these comedy nights. So what were you What were you
Speaker 2: learning as you watched these comics?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it was mostly open mic night, and
Speaker 1: you don't really learn a lot from open mic night
Speaker 1: because you know, nobody there is a professional. But Richie
Speaker 1: was so kind to me. He used to let me
Speaker 1: come and hang out on the weekends in an empty seat.
Speaker 1: So I rarely got to see female comics, which was
Speaker 1: a bummer because there were so few of us back then.
Speaker 1: They were like, you know, ten women, and we were
Speaker 1: working the circuit and we never got booked together because
Speaker 1: they didn't think two women could do a show together.
Speaker 1: You know, it was so rare to have a woman
Speaker 1: comic that they didn't ever let us work together, which
Speaker 1: was kind of sad. But what I learned from watching
Speaker 1: comics is first of all, that you have to use
Speaker 1: your own material. I used Jerry Seinfeld's material when I
Speaker 1: was seventeen, right, And not only did I take his material,
Speaker 1: I took his cadence. So I literally went on stage
Speaker 1: and said, you know, my cow got stuck on the
Speaker 1: way here. What am I looking for?
Speaker 2: Big?
Speaker 1: On off, switch on off. I'm thinking, hey, dogs don't
Speaker 1: have pockets, you know I did. And they walked off
Speaker 1: stae and I got a very good response, right, And
Speaker 1: these male comics come over to me in their thirties
Speaker 1: and I'm like a teenager and they said, where'd you
Speaker 1: get that? I said, Jerry Seinfeld, he was on MERV
Speaker 1: Griffin yesterday, he's a comedian. They say, well, you cannot
Speaker 1: use his jokes. I go why. They go, he you
Speaker 1: have to write your own jokes. I go, hold it.
Speaker 1: Barbara Streisam does not write music. All she does is
Speaker 1: sing I'm just going to be funny. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to write my own jokes. I'm not a writer. And
Speaker 1: they're like, well, that's how you have to do it.
Speaker 1: And here's our advice. Talk about your family, something nobody
Speaker 1: else talks about. Talk about your own experience and your
Speaker 1: own family. So that's what I learned, how to take
Speaker 1: my life, exaggerate it, twist it, and present it as
Speaker 1: a finished product. Like I learned that there's a couple
Speaker 1: kinds of comedy conversational and presentational, and the difference is
Speaker 1: pretty big. And which kind did you want to be?
Speaker 1: Where did you naturally fall in your comedic timing and
Speaker 1: your comedic vision? You know? And it was very very
Speaker 1: helpful whenever I read like Max Max Malcolm glod Well
Speaker 1: whatever his name is, and it says you have to
Speaker 1: do like one hundred thousand hours of something to get
Speaker 1: I put in my time at those comedy clubs years
Speaker 1: and years and years.
Speaker 2: You know, which type do you think you're more conversational presentation.
Speaker 1: I definitely think when I started, I was presentational, okay, right.
Speaker 1: I would work a bit, work a bit, work a bit,
Speaker 1: get it till it was a finished product and wrapped
Speaker 1: up in a nice little bow. I put it in
Speaker 1: the basket, and then I go on. But as I've
Speaker 1: gotten older and with this job now of podcasting, I
Speaker 1: think I prefer a more conversational approach. You know, even
Speaker 1: when I'm watching young comedians, I think I love when
Speaker 1: they're having conversations rather than you know, but I'm bumch,
Speaker 1: but I'm bumch.
Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, Well it's interesting because you know, we're
Speaker 2: all both in this business and by the way, even
Speaker 2: people who are not in this business, you're everyone's playing
Speaker 2: a character, right to a certain degree. You're playing a
Speaker 2: character with your family, or with your friends, or with
Speaker 2: this set of friends. It's different than that other set
Speaker 2: of friends. And but for you, did you feel like
Speaker 2: you were creating a character which was Rosie the stand up?
Speaker 2: Or what percentage of yourself did you bring into it?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I didn't bring anything about being gay
Speaker 1: because it was at a time when no one really
Speaker 1: talked about it and or asked you about it. Like
Speaker 1: no one ever said to me as I was, you know,
Speaker 1: growing up in the industry, Oh, by the way, are
Speaker 1: you gay? Like it wasn't a conversation. And I remember
Speaker 1: once when I was touring with Greece before we came
Speaker 1: into Broadway, and Lois Smith, who was a legendary publicist,
Speaker 1: was for one of the people who founded PMK. She
Speaker 1: was my publicist, and she was amazing because she was
Speaker 1: also Marilyn Monroe's publicist, and she knew everyone in show
Speaker 1: business and she was a legend and a wonderful blessing
Speaker 1: that she was in my life. And she had me
Speaker 1: interview somebody from Patrick Pachenko, I think his name is,
Speaker 1: from Cosmopolitan magazine and he asked me if I was
Speaker 1: dating anyone and I said no, and he said, well,
Speaker 1: who would you want to date? And I said anyone
Speaker 1: who applies? And he said could that person be a woman?
Speaker 1: I said, you never know, could be. Well, Lois called
Speaker 1: Helen Gurley Brown and had that part taken out of
Speaker 1: the interview. It was a time when there was no internet,
Speaker 1: the rumors weren't flying around everywhere. You could just remove it.
Speaker 1: She would made a call and removed it, you know,
Speaker 1: So I didn't use that part of my life, but
Speaker 1: I used my childhood because I was a young kid
Speaker 1: doing it starting out right, I was twenty. It was
Speaker 1: in my teens in the early twenties, and and I
Speaker 1: talked about my Irish being Irish and what that meant,
Speaker 1: and my dad with a brogue, and you know, I
Speaker 1: did my life as much as I could, but I
Speaker 1: didn't you know, I didn't put in any of the
Speaker 1: personal stuff about sexuality. And I don't think I would
Speaker 1: have even been I've been able to imagine how to
Speaker 1: incorporate that at the time.
Speaker 2: You know, did you lie or was it just omission?
Speaker 1: It was omission, but it was also a very public
Speaker 1: non secret. Like I would take Kelly, who was my wife,
Speaker 1: and to the Emmys every year, would sit next door.
Speaker 1: I mean, like I didn't show up with a boy.
Speaker 1: You know, people would say, well, you like you pretended
Speaker 1: that you love Tom Cruise. I go, no, I do
Speaker 1: love Tom Cruise. I fully love the fourteen year old girl.
Speaker 1: And me who put Bobby Sherman's picture on the wall
Speaker 1: loves him in the same that I loved Bobby Sherman.
Speaker 1: And he's turned out to be personally in my experience
Speaker 1: the most unbelievably consistent kind man to me. He sends
Speaker 1: me flowers on my birthday, he sends me things when
Speaker 1: my children are born. He's been stalwart and steady and
Speaker 1: really really like a dream almost to me where he
Speaker 1: could have run the other way going stalker stalker, you know.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so I don't know that. I don't think
Speaker 1: that I was hiding, but I didn't have a way
Speaker 1: to approach the gay thing because of the time period
Speaker 1: that it was in. Like when my show started, there
Speaker 1: was no will and grace right right. They said to
Speaker 1: me after the first season, Oh, there's a new show
Speaker 1: coming on NBC. It's a gay guy and a girl
Speaker 1: and they're going to be roommates. And I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: that'll never last. I'm gonna have a show with a
Speaker 1: gay person on it. I mean seriously, that was like
Speaker 1: what everyone thought. If people knew somebody was gay, they
Speaker 1: didn't watch. And remember Love Sidney. Do you remember that?
Speaker 1: It was a Tony Randall series that ran for like
Speaker 1: three weeks and they never said that he was gay.
Speaker 1: But he had a picture of a man over the
Speaker 1: fireplace and he would sort of look at it at
Speaker 1: the end of the episode, and I remember the Catholic
Speaker 1: Church went that shit crazy and it was pulled off
Speaker 1: the air. Wow, it just wasn't in my reality to
Speaker 1: think that it was accomplishable. Now, then the lawsuit came
Speaker 1: out with the ACLU where gay foster parents like me,
Speaker 1: I was a gay foster parent, were unable to adopt
Speaker 1: even the children they raised because that was the law
Speaker 1: in Florida, and the ACLU had a lawsuit with the
Speaker 1: Loft and Cruteau is the two men's names who the
Speaker 1: lawsuit was named after. They were pediatric aids nurses and
Speaker 1: aids cars. So anyway, I came out through that and
Speaker 1: that was like in January, right after nine to eleven,
Speaker 1: and it kind of was not even a story because
Speaker 1: we were aill in shock as a nation.
Speaker 2: You know, right, Star Search nineteen eighty four, you're making
Speaker 2: twenty seven hundred dollars a week. Do you consider that
Speaker 2: chance meeting with Claudia McMahon, What kind of impact do
Speaker 2: you feel like that had on your career? Did that
Speaker 2: change your life totally?
Speaker 1: One hundred. It was a very big show. I venture
Speaker 1: to say that it was as popular in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: four as American Idol was at its height. Sam Harris
Speaker 1: had been on the year before and America fell in
Speaker 1: love with him and his Judy Garland impression singing, and
Speaker 1: this was year two and so it was a very
Speaker 1: big deal and I went from being maybe an MC
Speaker 1: or an opener to a headliner after that. No, they
Speaker 1: weren't like big venues like Caesar's, you know, which I
Speaker 1: eventually worked my way up to. But they were little clubs,
Speaker 1: but you could make a living, you know. So I
Speaker 1: think if it hadn't been for Claudia McMahon, I would
Speaker 1: have toiled away in New York at the comedy clubs,
Speaker 1: you know, forever and hopefully you know, got a career
Speaker 1: or a sitcom or hopefully you know, get to play
Speaker 1: Rhoda Norgenstern.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I was. I was very happy with that
Speaker 1: chance meeting and and stayed you know, in touch with
Speaker 1: him throughout his life, and he was very proud of
Speaker 1: the Irish me that got up there to the finals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at this point, do you consider yourself And I
Speaker 2: talked to a lot of people about this. I get
Speaker 2: I get introduced or identified as this often, do you
Speaker 2: at that point at least did you consider yourself a
Speaker 2: comedian or an actor.
Speaker 1: Well, I think I think I would say actor, okay,
Speaker 1: because I was acting like a comedian, right, right, That's
Speaker 1: what I was studying comedy and then performing it and
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to mold that clay myself
Speaker 1: every night on stage. And and you know, I got
Speaker 1: pretty good at it. I mean I got nominated for
Speaker 1: a couple of Emmys for my specials. And you know
Speaker 1: I headlined Caesar's Palace. I mean that's a pretty big gig.
Speaker 2: You know, it was a huge gig.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I filled in for George Burns on his
Speaker 1: hundredth birthday at Caesar's Palace. He was supposed to be performing,
Speaker 1: but he couldn't, and he asked me to perform in
Speaker 1: his stead, and I did. And he called me in
Speaker 1: the dressing room and said, Rosie up. Did you hear
Speaker 1: the one about the domain at the Sparmbank? His job
Speaker 1: was to say thank you for coming, he told me
Speaker 1: jokes one hundred years old Hews on his deathbed, one
Speaker 1: hundred years old. He died like a week or two later.
Speaker 1: You know, oh, unbelievable. When I think about the people
Speaker 1: I've met, right, when I think about what my life
Speaker 1: has been since that little girl on Long Island. I'm
Speaker 1: kind of in awe of what's happened to me, right,
Speaker 1: you know, but it almost I have that dissociation still
Speaker 1: where it almost feels like it's kind of not me.
Speaker 1: Not like I'll see myself in at at the height
Speaker 1: of my fame, on the cover of a magazine and
Speaker 1: I'd walk by in New York in those little magazine
Speaker 1: huts they have, and I go, oh, look, Rosie O'Donnell's
Speaker 1: on Newsweek. But I wouldn't think, oh, look, there's me
Speaker 1: right right, there's me right.
Speaker 2: You do star search, you get some television shows, give
Speaker 2: me a break to mention one, you're headlining comedy clubs,
Speaker 2: then bigger and bigger, and then suddenly you're getting I assume,
Speaker 2: although I shouldn't assume, make some house out of you
Speaker 2: and me that you start getting talked to about being
Speaker 2: in the in the in the.
Speaker 1: Pictures, in the pictures, the movies.
Speaker 2: A league of their own obviously.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean it's like all time classic static, unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Did you get approached to do that? Yes, you got
Speaker 2: you got it. I was.
Speaker 1: I was a VJ. I became a VJ on Video
Speaker 1: Hits one VH one. Yeah, and I would make little
Speaker 1: two minutes the bits four times an hour live on TV. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I had to say coming up next as Whitney
Speaker 1: Houston from VH one Hits one, a special edition of
Speaker 1: a new album that and you know, and okay, that's
Speaker 1: thirty seconds. Now you have a minute and a half left,
Speaker 1: and i' start telling stories, Oh you know what happened
Speaker 1: today on the way is And you'd see the cameramen
Speaker 1: laugh and the camera would literally go like this because
Speaker 1: it was just me and two guys sitting there making
Speaker 1: it up for hours, right, And my agent called and said,
Speaker 1: can you play baseball? And I said yes? And she
Speaker 1: was also Julia Roberts agent, and I said, if there's
Speaker 1: one thing I can do better than Julia Roberts, it's this,
Speaker 1: you know. And so you had to play baseball first
Speaker 1: before you could audition, okay. And I played baseball very well,
Speaker 1: and you know, Penny knew who I was, and it
Speaker 1: was very very sisterly and took me under her wing.
Speaker 1: And there was times when she was calling out direction
Speaker 1: to us. Right, So she's got a bullhorn, she's got
Speaker 1: that accent. She usually had something in her mouth, like
Speaker 1: a piece of bacon or a cigarette, and she'd right
Speaker 1: cigarette and she'd be going, okay, well, what are you
Speaker 1: girls are all about? A fair there? Don't like bendo again?
Speaker 1: Get the file ball, come up with a hot dog
Speaker 1: and him I wants to do it. Nobody understood what
Speaker 1: she meant. Everyone looked at me and I go, I'll
Speaker 1: do it. You go, why always rosy? It's always rosy? Okay,
Speaker 1: go do it Rosie. So that part ended up being
Speaker 1: much bigger than it was written because of her generosity
Speaker 1: and her encouraging improvisation and you know, so so that
Speaker 1: was a huge, huge role to get. And then you know,
Speaker 1: three days in Penny goes calls me in the office
Speaker 1: and goes, tomorrow, Madonna's gonna come in. If she likes you,
Speaker 1: one likes me, she's gonna do the movie. Try to
Speaker 1: be funny. I was like, no pressure, no pressure at all,
Speaker 1: my first movie best friends with the most famous woman
Speaker 1: in the world. What's the chances of that happening?
Speaker 2: How was that for you? I mean, so you're a fan.
Speaker 1: I was a Madonna fan and totally and everyone was.
Speaker 1: Everyone was. Of course, she was magnificent. She was and
Speaker 1: still is, you know, one of those one named one
Speaker 1: a generation Bowie and and Elvis and Madonna, like there's
Speaker 1: no denying a legacy. Beyonce exactly, Beyonce and Eminem if
Speaker 1: I do say so myself. But yeah, so it changed
Speaker 1: my whole life, My whole career changed. Every single thing
Speaker 1: was being cast as Madonna's best friend. And you know,
Speaker 1: the thing is, we had very similar childhoods, with our
Speaker 1: mother's dying when we were young, and big Catholic families,
Speaker 1: and you know, we really got along right away. And
Speaker 1: the weirdest thing was I had just seen her movie
Speaker 1: Truth or Dare the day before. Penny said to me,
Speaker 1: you're going to meet her tomorrow. And when I met her,
Speaker 1: I said, you know, my mother died when I was
Speaker 1: young too, and I was named after her as well.
Speaker 1: And when I went to her graveside and laid on
Speaker 1: that grave with my own name on the two, I
Speaker 1: never thought I'd meet someone else who did that, and
Speaker 1: she was like, that was it for us. Then we
Speaker 1: became like, you know, blood sisters. You know, it's hard
Speaker 1: to maintain friendships in this business sometimes when people live
Speaker 1: all over the world and they're super duper megastars like Madonna,
Speaker 1: you know, but we have maintained a consistent, lifelong friendship
Speaker 1: for the last thirty years. And I can't imagine what
Speaker 1: my career would have done or become or if it
Speaker 1: hadn't been her in that movie, if it had been
Speaker 1: any other actress. But she was literally the most famous
Speaker 1: woman in the world at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and totally, and also Tom Hanks and also Gina Davis, yes,
Speaker 2: I mean this, and Penny Marshall, by the way, and
Speaker 2: John Love It's John love It. That's right. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: I love that that friendship is real. I don't know,
Speaker 2: I don't know that's the that's the boy and me,
Speaker 2: the younger man and me. But loving that that is
Speaker 2: the case. I think we, you know, everyone who watches
Speaker 2: that movie wants wants that to be the case. You
Speaker 2: came back, skipping ahead and did a cameo on the
Speaker 2: A League of their Own series. Yes, I did last year.
Speaker 2: Was that fun for you? I mean, this series deals
Speaker 2: with an issue you discussed earlier. There was a time
Speaker 2: when things weren't talked about as great as that movie was.
Speaker 2: Sexuality and race were not prominently featured, unlike the series.
Speaker 2: How did it feel for you to go back one
Speaker 2: into that world and two to be dealing with some
Speaker 2: of those issues a little bit deeper? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, Habby Jacobson is such a talent, and
Speaker 1: Natasha Leone is a close friend, and she introduces me
Speaker 1: to all these young amazing women who are you know,
Speaker 1: in their thirties and producing and directing and writing just
Speaker 1: like Natasha is, and acting. And it's been so great,
Speaker 1: you know, because it keeps me like inspired, and you know,
Speaker 1: like I see them doing so well, I'm like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, that's Aubrey Plaz. I know her through Natasha,
Speaker 1: you know. So I met with her and with we
Speaker 1: had dinner and me Abby and Natasha, and Abby was
Speaker 1: telling me that she had met with Penny and she
Speaker 1: had the rights and she was thinking of doing this,
Speaker 1: and I said, oh my god, if you could, it
Speaker 1: would be fantastic, you know what, in a wonderful way
Speaker 1: that the new generation of young women athletes wanted to
Speaker 1: be represented like that. You know, she wanted to put
Speaker 1: in all the realities that we face in our world
Speaker 1: today about all this you know, anti gay rhetoric, all
Speaker 1: of these bills that are being passed against trans people,
Speaker 1: and you know, what's currently political is very relevant, and
Speaker 1: it was then too. It's just we've only now caught
Speaker 1: up to, you know, almost telling the truth. We don't
Speaker 1: want to teach critical race theory, you know, God forbid.
Speaker 1: We should actually teach what we have done as a
Speaker 1: nation and learned from and no longer are as horrible
Speaker 1: as we were dot com, you know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I was so moved that she asked me
Speaker 1: to do it. I said, of course. I went down
Speaker 1: to Pittsburgh and walked in and they were all in
Speaker 1: our uniforms. Like it was so weird. I'm like this,
Speaker 1: like I'm looking around for Bitty Shram and Renee Coleman,
Speaker 1: all the women I did it with, Like I'm going,
Speaker 1: how did this happen? You know? And I love the
Speaker 1: way they cast it as like homages to people like,
Speaker 1: you know, the girl who's chubby and beautiful, you know,
Speaker 1: and funny and wisecrack, and they have a Madonna archetype,
Speaker 1: they have a Bitty archetype. Like I loved how they
Speaker 1: did that, and they did it beautifully, and I was
Speaker 1: so proud of what that show stood for. The nuances,
Speaker 1: the inclusion, the historical perspective, the sociological relevance, it just
Speaker 1: really I thought it was an excellent piece of art.
Speaker 1: And I'm very disappointed that Amazon only gave them four episodes.
Speaker 1: They got to pick up for four episodes, and you know,
Speaker 1: people love that series. I can tell you right now
Speaker 1: it's going to be a fan uproar because four is
Speaker 1: not enough for that show. The girls were wonderful, the
Speaker 1: young women, and I thought it was an important role
Speaker 1: to play of this, you know, lesbian woman who based
Speaker 1: on a real character, real woman who had lived and
Speaker 1: presented as a man mostly you know, in a time
Speaker 1: when that would get you beat up by the cops.
Speaker 1: And I thought it was a very tastefully done gay
Speaker 1: bashing that happens every day, and that's been happening in
Speaker 1: our country, you know, for too many years. And it
Speaker 1: was very trauma trauma, like I had a trauma response
Speaker 1: because even though your brain tells you these are cops,
Speaker 1: these are not cops. These are actors. And you just
Speaker 1: had lunch with them. That one has a kid, and
Speaker 1: that when someone's calling you names and hitting you with
Speaker 1: a ton, now it's a course, a prop one. Your
Speaker 1: body I think doesn't realize, oh my god, this is fake,
Speaker 1: you know, when you're being thrown against a like or
Speaker 1: I'm not a good enough actor to separate it. But
Speaker 1: it was very traumatic to film, very emotional to film.
Speaker 1: But I was very proud of it, and I'm so
Speaker 1: happy that they asked.
Speaker 2: Me, yeah, was it weird? I mean you talked about
Speaker 2: seeing them in your in your your uniform.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in our uniforms, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is what this is twenty twenty five
Speaker 2: year at thirty you know later yes, uh, I mean,
Speaker 2: what a gift to be able to go back, yes,
Speaker 2: and experience that.
Speaker 1: Again, and to see also the excitement of this very young,
Speaker 1: very gifted group of actors and actresses going back.
Speaker 2: You know, we talked about Madonna. There's Tom Hanks, so
Speaker 2: she and Davis Penny Marshall for her to be the
Speaker 2: director of your first film as well. I mean, a
Speaker 2: legend as an actor originally and now as a director.
Speaker 2: Do you feel like she helped.
Speaker 1: You tremendously, Yeah, tremendously, tremendously. I can't even articulate it.
Speaker 1: She was my first director, and she featured me prominently
Speaker 1: in the movie that she didn't have to do that.
Speaker 1: She took me on every talk show she went on
Speaker 1: because she would usually get nervous and she wanted someone
Speaker 1: to commits with her. And we commits very good together.
Speaker 1: And then we started doing those KMAR commercials. You know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: made a lot of money on.
Speaker 2: I forgot the care, Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1: Me and Penny. And sometimes, you know, she would get
Speaker 1: there and she was in no shape to be awake
Speaker 1: and she had had a few too many the night before,
Speaker 1: and so David Steinberg, who directed them, and I would
Speaker 1: rewrite the script and have Penny dressed as an elf
Speaker 1: asleep on the toy shelf, and then I would just
Speaker 1: talk about what Kmart wanted us to say. But you know,
Speaker 1: she she indulged a little bit, Penny Marshall, and you know,
Speaker 1: she got sick at the end. It was very sad,
Speaker 1: and when she lost Carrie, I think it was devastating.
Speaker 1: They were like glued at the hip, you know, for
Speaker 1: a very long time, and I think, you know, she
Speaker 1: got lonely and towards the end had gained a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of weight from cancer treatments and was in a wheelchair,
Speaker 1: and you know, was was very unhappy and tragic, and
Speaker 1: I was in shock. Even though I knew that she
Speaker 1: wasn't well, I wasn't expecting to get the phone call
Speaker 1: that she had passed. You know, yeah, I mean she
Speaker 1: took me to Laker games. She took me to every basketball, football,
Speaker 1: any sport. She was a hoarder, collector, like she had
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred quilts in her house and you know, in
Speaker 1: a thousand old typewriters, and you know, it's a crazy
Speaker 1: it was a crazy, extremely exotic and artistic and nutty
Speaker 1: way to live.
Speaker 2: Right. It's funny that you just said the Lakers, because
Speaker 2: that's you know. I never had the opportunity to work
Speaker 2: with her, but many times in the in the bowels
Speaker 2: of Staples Center, and there was a little cigar room
Speaker 2: where I would run into Penny and she we would
Speaker 2: talk about the Lakers. Let's talk about basketball.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's all she cared about, really. And you know,
Speaker 1: she called me about ten years after we did League
Speaker 1: of their Own, So, you know, twenty years ago, twenty
Speaker 1: five years ago, mame and she said to me, Rosie,
Speaker 1: could you play soccer? I said, what could you play soccer?
Speaker 1: I don't know, I never It wasn't my sport truthfully,
Speaker 1: too much running. I didn't like it. I had to sit,
Speaker 1: but you know, yeah, I know how to play soccer.
Speaker 1: Why She's like, well, there's a team in Mexico. Great story,
Speaker 1: you could be the lady. I go, I'm Rosie O'Donnell.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be the Mexican woman on the soccer coach.
Speaker 1: But she was always trying to like get everybody back
Speaker 1: together and do it again, and you know, do you
Speaker 1: play soccer. We'd never made the soccer movie, but we
Speaker 1: had a lot of dinners. We had a lot of
Speaker 1: late night conversations. She wasn't always easy to understand because
Speaker 1: she mum, and sometimes when you know she was feeling
Speaker 1: no pain, she'd mumble a lot. I was on a
Speaker 1: private plane with her once, her plane from the Kmart
Speaker 1: commercial flying back to LA and she gave me a
Speaker 1: ride and it was full of Kmart crap, like you know,
Speaker 1: a stove right, like you know, an outdoor camping tent,
Speaker 1: and it was full. She goes, I like, get a
Speaker 1: calm on a plane, but we got so much shit,
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's gonna be a seat. And
Speaker 1: surely when I got on it was it was like
Speaker 1: Santa's workshop. She took everything. It was right before Christmas,
Speaker 1: and she's like, I got everybody what I need for
Speaker 1: Christmas from Kmart.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, that is amazing. Those were legendary, those commercials.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't remember commercials, but I remember those commercials. Yes,
Speaker 2: I had totally forgotten. So prior to ninety six, you
Speaker 2: also do Sleepless in Seattle. Now is that a connection
Speaker 2: to knowing mister Hanks or is that totally separate?
Speaker 1: That was Nora Ephron and her son Jake, who is
Speaker 1: a wonderful gay man that I've known since he was
Speaker 1: a baby. He loved Madonna, okay, like in a way
Speaker 1: that I can't even. So I went to Nora's house
Speaker 1: and I read for her movie Sleeps in Seattle, and
Speaker 1: she went and got new pages off the printer and
Speaker 1: had me read those that they had just finished. And
Speaker 1: then I talked a little bit about what I knew
Speaker 1: about her, which I knew a lot, and she was
Speaker 1: kind of charmed, you know, I think, And she mentioned
Speaker 1: at dinner, oh, I interviewed this girl or audition this
Speaker 1: girl Rosie O'Donnell, and Jacob went, mom, you have to
Speaker 1: hire her. She's about to come out in this Baseball
Speaker 1: movie and she plays Madonna's best friend and she's so
Speaker 1: great then, and Nora Efron gave me that job and
Speaker 1: then got me an apartment in the Apthorpe and I
Speaker 1: lived there with her and her husband Nick and her
Speaker 1: kids for a big chunk of time in New York City.
Speaker 2: Wow. In ninety six, you decide to change careers again again.
Speaker 2: If you're Broadway actress, if you're a stand up comedian,
Speaker 2: you're a movie star. Now you decide to launch begin
Speaker 2: the Rosy O'Donnells show. Talk to me a little bit
Speaker 2: about how that happens. Is this something you want? You say,
Speaker 2: this is what I want? Or this kind of opportunity
Speaker 2: presented to you.
Speaker 1: What happened was Kathy Lee Gifford was always saying at
Speaker 1: this time, and it was a very popular morning show.
Speaker 1: Her in regis that she was leaving. She was, you know,
Speaker 1: she didn't like the paparazzi and they did said things
Speaker 1: about her husband and she didn't like any of it,
Speaker 1: and she was quitting. So I had Parker, my first child,
Speaker 1: in June of ninety five, and I did Harriet the
Speaker 1: Spy six months later. I did not have a nanny
Speaker 1: because I never knew anyone who had a nanny. So
Speaker 1: I had the baby with me for the first six months.
Speaker 1: And I bring my cleaning lady with me to the
Speaker 1: movie set in Toronto so she can watch him while
Speaker 1: I go do this movie. And I came back from
Speaker 1: work one day late, you know, in late hours, hard
Speaker 1: movie schedules, and he wouldn't come to me. She was
Speaker 1: holding him, and I put out my arms and he
Speaker 1: wouldn't come to me. And I called my agent and said,
Speaker 1: I want a job that I could stay home in
Speaker 1: New York, that he can be raised with his cousins,
Speaker 1: that I can have a life, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to go away from my family and life for months
Speaker 1: at a time and live in a hotel. I did it.
Speaker 1: I don't think I can ask for more than the
Speaker 1: number one movie three summers in a row I was in.
Speaker 1: I don't know who wants more, but they're if they do,
Speaker 1: you know, shame on them, because that was pretty astounding.
Speaker 1: And then they said, well, Kathy Lee Giffer is leaving,
Speaker 1: we're going to put your name in and I said, fantastic. Well,
Speaker 1: Kathie Lee decided to stay, but they had got such
Speaker 1: a good reaction when they went and focus grouped it
Speaker 1: that they said, let's do your own show and I said, well, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do it like Merv Griffin and Mike
Speaker 1: Douglas and they go, well, you know, is it going
Speaker 1: to be I said, no, It's going to be exactly
Speaker 1: mur Nobody gets hurt, celebrities come out, we have fun,
Speaker 1: we laugh, we might sing an Irish song, we play games,
Speaker 1: and nobody gets hurt. And at the time, Heraldo was
Speaker 1: being beat up and Jenny Jones had a death with
Speaker 1: one of the guests because he was murdered by the
Speaker 1: other guests, and you know, people were being bloodied. It
Speaker 1: was like a horrible time for daytime. Yes, and so
Speaker 1: when I came on, it was like a breath of
Speaker 1: fresh air. And then, you know, they call me the
Speaker 1: Queen of Nice, which I knew was going to bite
Speaker 1: me in the ass and definitely did, because nobody really
Speaker 1: is the Queen of nice. If you had seen my
Speaker 1: stand up, you never would have called me that because
Speaker 1: I went and went after Woody Allen. I went after
Speaker 1: societal ills. I you know, I used my voice loudly
Speaker 1: and wielded it, you know, powerfully, in certain parts of
Speaker 1: my life and career and felt like you have to
Speaker 1: that is what's asked of you. If you have access
Speaker 1: to a microphone, you better use it for a cause
Speaker 1: other than just yourself.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I said, I want the Oprah deal. And
Speaker 1: at the time, nobody was paid to do a pilot, right,
Speaker 1: But they paid me five million dollars up front because
Speaker 1: I was coming off all these movies and I had,
Speaker 1: you know, made a lot of money, and then I
Speaker 1: had ownership and back end like Oprah. And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: this baby that I'm doing this for will be going
Speaker 1: into kindergarten in four you so I'll make a four
Speaker 1: year deal and then I'll leave when he gets to kindergarten. Now,
Speaker 1: my mother had died at thirty nine, so I always
Speaker 1: knew I wanted to retire by forty. That was totally
Speaker 1: in my brain and I worked very hard up until
Speaker 1: I was forty in order to get that. And one
Speaker 1: of the things was the talk show. Now, it was
Speaker 1: a huge hit instantly. It you know, threw me into
Speaker 1: a level of fame that I don't think anyone is
Speaker 1: ever ready for. People kind of think they want it
Speaker 1: and they crave it. But how you maintain your equilibrium,
Speaker 1: you know, in the middle of a tsunami, all you
Speaker 1: try to do is get some air, right trying to
Speaker 1: you can't get to a stable place. You just got
Speaker 1: to stick your head above the water and breathe, you know.
Speaker 1: And it caused a lot of anxiety for me, a
Speaker 1: lot of depression, a lot of panic, a lot of
Speaker 1: feeling responsible for the things that go wrong. Like you know,
Speaker 1: April twentieth, nineteen ninety nine, Columbine, and I could not
Speaker 1: believe that in our country children were killing other children
Speaker 1: in schools while the cops stood outside like I couldn't.
Speaker 1: As a mother, I felt a duty to speak up.
Speaker 1: I had two small children, and I thought this has
Speaker 1: to stop. I'm gonna go speak out against the NRA,
Speaker 1: you know, and I did. I also had a breakdown
Speaker 1: at that time. That's what I think we technically would
Speaker 1: call that, where I couldn't sleep and I would wake
Speaker 1: up and think that my children were in the hallway
Speaker 1: and there was a gunman in the house. And it
Speaker 1: was the first time I was put on medication. And
Speaker 1: I thank God every day that I was because I'm
Speaker 1: still here in one piece and having a great, happy
Speaker 1: life at sixty one. So you know, thank god, everybody
Speaker 1: finds the way that works for them. But you know,
Speaker 1: my clinical depression and PTSD and you know, trauma tat
Speaker 1: two is pretty hard to deal with sometimes, but I'm
Speaker 1: on it. You know, I am a great therapist. I
Speaker 1: have a great psychopharmacologist. I'm totally in charge of keeping
Speaker 1: myself balanced and happy. That's great, and I have been
Speaker 1: able to do it. Yeah, been able to do it.
Speaker 1: But so I took the show. I don't know how
Speaker 1: I got here from the show, but I took the
Speaker 1: show it and it became a huge hit, really really quickly.
Speaker 1: And then when it was a huge hit, I signed
Speaker 1: on for two more years, so that would make it
Speaker 1: six years, so he would be like in going into
Speaker 1: second grade. So I thought, that's still young enough. But
Speaker 1: that's what I did, and so when I left, he
Speaker 1: was seven. When I was done with the show, he
Speaker 1: was seven.
Speaker 2: You talked about the label of queen of nice is
Speaker 2: what your label was? Yet you started your comedy career
Speaker 2: and through a lot of your stint. I mean you
Speaker 2: started your comedy career making fun of your teachers. Let's
Speaker 2: be clear of that. Yeah, true, yes, and making fun
Speaker 2: of your classmates at your first stand upright, because you
Speaker 2: don't have any material, Like, was that label for you difficult?
Speaker 1: I just knew right away that's not really the right word,
Speaker 1: you know. But comparatively at the time to what was
Speaker 1: on daytime TV, Who's Your Daddy, you know, Maury Povich, Like,
Speaker 1: it was crazy, It was insane. People were having fistfights.
Speaker 1: It was crazy. And I wanted a safe place that
Speaker 1: my kids and I could watch, like my nana and
Speaker 1: I watched Dinah and MERV and Mike. I wanted a
Speaker 1: multi generational show like that. And you know, for that show,
Speaker 1: I was the Queen of nice at that time.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: But whenever that's your moniker, you know, people are very
Speaker 1: happy to try to pull you off of it.
Speaker 2: You know, do you like that form of entertainment like.
Speaker 1: I used to? Okay, I used to. I used to
Speaker 1: love it. In fact, when they offered me my own show,
Speaker 1: I knew exactly how to do it because I loved
Speaker 1: and studied them so much all during the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1: So by the time they asked me to do it,
Speaker 1: I was an expert at it. I had done my
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand hours, right, but I found during my
Speaker 1: own show this was happening. You know, you would only
Speaker 1: get someone when they were doing press for a certain movie.
Speaker 1: They had specific stories because they're not comedians, right, And
Speaker 1: you had to prompt them with the story that someone
Speaker 1: produced talking to them and then told you about and
Speaker 1: you have to act surprised at it. You know, it's
Speaker 1: hard to be authentic when those are the rules. And
Speaker 1: the more and more we became a celebrity obsessed culture,
Speaker 1: the more social media platforms were added to our reality,
Speaker 1: the harder it got to find authentic way to talk
Speaker 1: to people as entertainment. You know, I think what David
Speaker 1: Letterman has done is amazing that you know, he conquered
Speaker 1: that field and then some right, he created a whole
Speaker 1: new generation of kind of deadbeat, quirky, weird comedy. And
Speaker 1: he's now doing these beautiful produced sit down interviews, yeah,
Speaker 1: with people that he wants to talk to, and it's
Speaker 1: completely compelling because his intent is pure. You know, he's
Speaker 1: not trying to make a lot of money. And I
Speaker 1: hope he made a big deal. I'm sure he did.
Speaker 1: He's David Letterman, but he's not sitting there going you know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do this for the money, right, right, He's
Speaker 1: gonna do it as a creative outlet to keep your
Speaker 1: brain agile and your artistic nature exercised. So I loved
Speaker 1: the art form back then. I would love to see
Speaker 1: what it can become now, Zach Gelifan between two ferns.
Speaker 1: Come on, that's a pretty good take on a talk show, right,
Speaker 1: There's ways to do it. And you know, I'm just
Speaker 1: not so sure that the show would be able to
Speaker 1: be as popular today because we're such a divisive nation.
Speaker 1: We're really cut in half. I mean, you watch TV
Speaker 1: and France and Israel, and everyone is on the verge
Speaker 1: of authoritarianism, pouncing and grabbing their country. And we're not
Speaker 1: the only ones, you know, we're not the only ones,
Speaker 1: but we're all in crisis and it's been for a while,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's really hard to stay balanced. And
Speaker 1: you know, we had Rory Kennedy on yesterday and it's
Speaker 1: just today, I guess it's on. I'm sorry, I don't
Speaker 1: know we dropped it. I don't know what that means.
Speaker 1: But anyway, she was saying that, you know, scientists are
Speaker 1: saying that there's maybe ten more years and then there
Speaker 1: is complete breakdown and failure of world because of climate change.
Speaker 1: Like these are pretty meta concepts, right, but we have
Speaker 1: to get together. I don't know if a show like mine,
Speaker 1: if if I would be allowed to be as loud
Speaker 1: as I want to be on TikTok and and whatever
Speaker 1: state my views, you know, and it would you know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem that it would fit in today's culture.
Speaker 1: But I don't know. You know, I think when you
Speaker 1: watch it, there's an innocence, there's a nostalgia. Yes, there's
Speaker 1: a feeling of new babies being born and life blossoming,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's really wonderful. I watch it back
Speaker 1: and I get choked up sometimes and I go, wow,
Speaker 1: look at that. You know, my kid will find it
Speaker 1: on We'll find a clip on something and Blaky You'll
Speaker 1: send it to me. He's like, Mom, you know, told
Speaker 1: me you met him like I met everybody. Everybody there
Speaker 1: was to me, I met him.
Speaker 2: It's awesome. I mean, it's it's so crazy. When you
Speaker 2: think back, you have all this jews coming off as
Speaker 2: you say, the number one movie for three years in
Speaker 2: a row, three summers in a row. Yeah, yeah, three
Speaker 2: summers in a row. And you create a show that
Speaker 2: you want to do that's different than what's happening there.
Speaker 2: It becomes a huge success, and you're still feeling the anxiety,
Speaker 2: in part, I'm sure because of all of the attention
Speaker 2: being focused on you at this time. I mean, you
Speaker 2: truly are one of the biggest stars in the country
Speaker 2: that everybody is looking to, and you know, diving into
Speaker 2: and all of that. What do you see now as
Speaker 2: the show's legacy after it's it's now done.
Speaker 1: I would say it was the time of the legacy
Speaker 1: of the show. I think is love because I think
Speaker 1: the reason that I was successful is because I really
Speaker 1: loved Florence Henderson. And when I had her on the show,
Speaker 1: it was trippy to think that I would dream that
Speaker 1: she would be my mom and that here she is
Speaker 1: sitting next to me and being motherly. Florence Henderson would
Speaker 1: come over to my house and play with Parker and
Speaker 1: these older women who knew that I was a motherless child,
Speaker 1: motherless child, you know, and stepped in in a magical
Speaker 1: way almost. You know, there was something magical about the show.
Speaker 1: It was pure, and it was it was kind, and
Speaker 1: it was it was fun. I think we had fun,
Speaker 1: you know, and everybody wanted to be in the audience.
Speaker 1: It was a tiny little studio with like two hundred seats,
Speaker 1: and everybody wanted to be there. And then when when
Speaker 1: I did tickle Me Elmo, I remember getting a call
Speaker 1: from Aaron Spelling, like, one of the richest men in
Speaker 1: the world calls me to ask me if I had
Speaker 1: four Jicklebee almos for his grandchildren. I was like, okay, sir,
Speaker 1: well listen, thank you for Dynasty. I enjoyed that so
Speaker 1: much when I was a job. Let me get back
Speaker 1: to you. And then I go to my assistant find
Speaker 1: four fucking almost for Aaron Spelling like, and then I think,
Speaker 1: whose life is this?
Speaker 2: This is a crazy life.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a crazy life. And I never really
Speaker 1: believed at the height of like when oh, you're the
Speaker 1: most influential, you're on this list, You're on that list.
Speaker 1: You know. I usually didn't go to the party, you know,
Speaker 1: I like, I didn't always believe it, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Like, I feel like I have a healthy
Speaker 1: amount of reality in my show business. I don't know,
Speaker 1: is that weird to say? No?
Speaker 2: I think I get it, but but you must be aware,
Speaker 2: or you should be aware of the countless doors that
Speaker 2: you opened in your career for other people in the
Speaker 2: LGBTQ community. You opened up a lot of doors during
Speaker 2: this time and after for people that came after you.
Speaker 2: Do you are you proud of that? Do you acknowledge
Speaker 2: that to yourself?
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I definitely do. And I you know, I
Speaker 1: feel that some people are marathon runners and some people
Speaker 1: are sprinters, and I knew that I'm hardly a jogger, right,
Speaker 1: I work very very hard, but I'm tired, you know,
Speaker 1: like I want to lay down and watch something like
Speaker 1: I don't have the kind of energy that that I
Speaker 1: did back then, and it was a very large amount
Speaker 1: of work. But I do realize that. And you know,
Speaker 1: I was at NOBU yesterday and this is it's.
Speaker 2: So funny because you're so not this. I'm gonna totally
Speaker 2: interrupt you that that is like the most like Hollywood.
Speaker 1: I know, I know yesterday anyway, I've never seen it.
Speaker 2: He was like the opposite of that. So I had
Speaker 2: to at least call it.
Speaker 1: You have to. I've never seen a Kardashian there. I
Speaker 1: just want you to know. I go there like three
Speaker 1: or four times a week. It's almost like my come
Speaker 1: my neighborhood restaurant. I'm right on the beach in Malibu
Speaker 1: and right next door is Noboo.
Speaker 2: I just ate at Nobuo two nights in a row
Speaker 2: in Vegas.
Speaker 1: Now, if I could eat it every day, I would
Speaker 1: eat it every day. But can I read this to you?
Speaker 1: What this this note that happened at Nobuo.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: So I see this family sitting in front of me,
Speaker 1: and they're very young. I thought at first they were teenagers,
Speaker 1: but very kind of good looking, like like he looked
Speaker 1: like an artist to me, like I thought he had
Speaker 1: done real funky clothes. I bet he's a fashion designer,
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, And what a pretty wife. And
Speaker 1: I go to get the check and the guy says, oh,
Speaker 1: it's paid for. I said, what do you mean. He said, well,
Speaker 1: there's a note for you. And apparently this young man
Speaker 1: paid my bill and left with and never bothered me,
Speaker 1: but he left me this note. Rosie, Thank you for
Speaker 1: being you and setting an example of what it means
Speaker 1: to be yourself in the face of adversity and negativity.
Speaker 1: Because of your strength and bravery, a little boy found
Speaker 1: the light in a childhood riddled with violence, drug abuse,
Speaker 1: and depression, and now I'm one of the biggest rappers
Speaker 1: in the whole world. Thank you with unconditional reverence. Logic
Speaker 1: Bobby Hall, Now, I had no idea who Logic was,
Speaker 1: but I felt like, this is the legacy of the show,
Speaker 1: that there are millions of artists and they were inspired,
Speaker 1: and they knew to go there, and they knew what
Speaker 1: we were selling was membership in this world. And uh,
Speaker 1: I was so blown away. I go on to my
Speaker 1: son who's twenty three, and my daughter who's twenty and
Speaker 1: I send the copy of it to both of them
Speaker 1: and they both call me screaming on the phone, screaming,
Speaker 1: I am going to use this for the next three years.
Speaker 1: Like Blake was like, do you want to keep it?
Speaker 1: I'm like, yes, I'm keeping it. He's like, I want
Speaker 1: to show my friends. I'm like, I'll send you a
Speaker 1: picture of it. You know. But I was so I
Speaker 1: was so.
Speaker 2: Moved that is I'm you know what I'm so that
Speaker 2: makes me so happy. Yeah, for you, that makes me
Speaker 2: so happy that that happened for you. Obviously for Logic
Speaker 2: as well, that he was able to come out of
Speaker 2: a difficult situation in part because of you. But for
Speaker 2: him to tell you that.
Speaker 1: And to buy me a very expensive dinner as well
Speaker 1: a lunch with a friend of mine who I knew
Speaker 1: was a comedian years ago and I hadn't seen in
Speaker 1: forty years. We had a lunch and talked about doing
Speaker 1: stand up in the old days. But he did, and
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, and I think to myself every
Speaker 1: time that somebody writes to me or stops me or
Speaker 1: tells me, you know, it is a gift. It's a gift.
Speaker 1: And my children make fun of me because of the
Speaker 1: difference between when they were little and we used to
Speaker 1: go to the mall and going to the mall now,
Speaker 1: and or we go to a baseball game or a
Speaker 1: football game, and and my sons would totally rag on me, like, mom,
Speaker 1: nobody recognized you the whole game.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, honey, Mommy's lost it. I got gray
Speaker 1: hair now, and I don't know what to tell you.
Speaker 1: Nobody knew you.
Speaker 2: Well, you start going to games again. Yeah, by the way,
Speaker 2: because you're you are hot.
Speaker 1: I am. I didn't know.
Speaker 2: That you you are, you are absolutely you come back.
Speaker 2: You do smelf?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Uh you Then your friend, as you said, Natasha Leone,
Speaker 2: you get cast in season two of Russian All and
Speaker 2: Now Onward with Rosie O'Donnell. For those who haven't heard
Speaker 2: it yet, this is Rosie's brand new podcast where she
Speaker 2: gets to have real conversations with incredible people. Right, what
Speaker 2: has it been like for you diving into the podcast world.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm I'm just learning how to do it, though, Brian,
Speaker 1: I thought it would be more like the radio show,
Speaker 1: and it's very different than a radio show. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I had a thing I'm serious for a while, and yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was four friends of mine and we all just
Speaker 1: kind of did like what Howard does in the morning.
Speaker 1: You know, we talked to a celebrity or whoever we
Speaker 1: could get, and we just that was the one to mimic.
Speaker 1: If you're going to mimic a successful radio pro person,
Speaker 1: it's going to be Howard's stern. Right. So, yes, but
Speaker 1: I did think. I did think I'm gonna do something
Speaker 1: creative that I can stay home because I have a
Speaker 1: daughter who has autism, who is ten years old, and
Speaker 1: I want to be I have to be more accessible
Speaker 1: to her, especially now that she's getting to be a preteen.
Speaker 1: And you know, they've what I've heard from doctors and
Speaker 1: experts and people I used to help guide her is
Speaker 1: the teen years are quite difficult usually because you know,
Speaker 1: hormones are going everywhere and emotions are sometimes confusing for
Speaker 1: artistic kids. And so I wanted to do something I
Speaker 1: could do like this right from my home. I hear
Speaker 1: her playing her iPad in the background, right. So it's
Speaker 1: it works for me, and it's artistically fulfilling because I
Speaker 1: get to talk to people like you were interesting and
Speaker 1: have conversations that matter and mean things without you know,
Speaker 1: a timeframe of you have to get off at this
Speaker 1: many a m minute.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's what I always talked about, not being
Speaker 2: on such a strict schedule. You know, the idea of
Speaker 2: you know, a couple of weeks ago, I did the
Speaker 2: Today Show, right, and it's like I all I hear
Speaker 2: is you have thirty five seconds, you have fifteen seconds, giggle, giggle, giggle,
Speaker 2: one joke and we're done. You know, being able to
Speaker 2: really talk to people, are you? Are you having a
Speaker 2: good time with very good time?
Speaker 1: But I really am just learning, Like I have to
Speaker 1: admit that I never really listen to any Besides, I've
Speaker 1: seen Joe Rogan a lot because I knew him as
Speaker 1: a comic and I, you know, like his podcast. I
Speaker 1: think it's very interesting. I listen every day during the
Speaker 1: Trump administration to Podsave America, and those guys saved me
Speaker 1: and they helped me navigate my emotions through the trauma.
Speaker 1: And I aside from that, I haven't really known the
Speaker 1: art form for very long. And in hindsight, I think
Speaker 1: it was kind of lazy of me. I should have
Speaker 1: like I should have consumed it more before I started
Speaker 1: trying to do it. But you know, Laurie and I
Speaker 1: who's been a producer with me since my TV show,
Speaker 1: she did all the music on my TV show. We
Speaker 1: put it together and and we we got something that
Speaker 1: has a strong voice. And now the other parts were
Speaker 1: gonna fix, you know, like where to put the commercials
Speaker 1: and how many commercials? And should it be longer? Where
Speaker 1: should it be? You know those things that I have
Speaker 1: no knowledge about. You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, I look, you have absolutely crushed everything that
Speaker 2: you have that you have that you've done so far,
Speaker 2: and you're such a delight to talk to. I have
Speaker 2: long admired you and your career and all that you've
Speaker 2: accomplished and done for people. I yeah, I wish you
Speaker 2: nothing but the best.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, and the same thing for you.
Speaker 1: You've made me laugh so many times. My kid, uh
Speaker 1: does all the impressions and knows all the lines, and
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful it's a beautiful legacy to have been
Speaker 1: so funny for so long on such a great show.
Speaker 1: You know, those people like Mary Tyler Moore for me,
Speaker 1: Valor Harper, you know Vivian Vance, They're factors in my
Speaker 1: childhood and you are that for so many Well, thank.
Speaker 2: You, thank you so much. I can't wait for us
Speaker 2: to do it again. This is part one.
Speaker 1: That's part one. I'll be back for parts part one right.
Speaker 1: Thank you so.
Speaker 2: Much, Rosie, thank you so much for joining me. That
Speaker 2: was a pleasure. I cannot wait to check out your
Speaker 2: new podcast, Onward with Rosie O'Donnell, and truly I cannot
Speaker 2: wait for part two. Listeners, I'll see you next week
Speaker 2: for another episode with another fantastic guest who's thankfully not
Speaker 2: dead yet. Boy, you know, I love doing this podcast,
Speaker 2: I really really do. Thank you for listening, have a
Speaker 2: great week, and uh yeah, I'll see you next week.
Speaker 2: Off the Beat is hosted and executive produced by me
Speaker 2: Brian Baumgartner, alongside our executive producer lingg Lee. Our senior
Speaker 2: producer is Diego Tapia. Our producers are Liz Hayes, Hannah
Speaker 2: Harris and Emily Carr. Our talent producer is Ryan Papa Zachary,
Speaker 2: and our intern is Sammy Katz. Our theme song Bubble
Speaker 2: and Squeak, performed by the one and only Creed Bratton,