Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: Rosie O'Donnell has been a stand up comic, a star
Speaker 1: search contestant, an actress, a talk show host, a philanthropist
Speaker 1: and activist, a magazine editor, a blogger, a Broadway and
Speaker 1: television producer, and a mom. Rosie has five kids. Doing
Speaker 1: it all was a pattern Rosie established early in high school.
Speaker 1: She was voted Homecoming Queen, prom Queen, Senior class president,
Speaker 1: and class clown. Rosie O'Donnell is not one to mince words,
Speaker 1: and she's never shied away from a controversial subject. Her
Speaker 1: combination of confidence and conviction has led to very public
Speaker 1: disagreements with celebrities such as Tom Selleck, Donald Trump, and
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Hasselbeck from the view, but that same combination led
Speaker 1: to her husually successful talk show, The Rosy O'Donnell Show,
Speaker 1: where she sat down with the biggest stars of the
Speaker 1: time and talked about what mattered to them and to her.
Speaker 1: She earned herself the nickname the Queen of Nice. Rosie
Speaker 1: o'donnald is nice and grateful for 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 so ten and they were two younger siblings
Speaker 1: and two older siblings, right, so that was really hard
Speaker 1: to everything. Yes, and and it's sort of close to her,
Speaker 1: not really, I mean I think that she was very
Speaker 1: irish and reserved like my father. There was no I
Speaker 1: love using the house. There was no hugging, you know.
Speaker 1: It was more like like I went to Jackie's house
Speaker 1: all the time. My best friend still lived across the
Speaker 1: street when I was a kid, and her mother would
Speaker 1: say I love you to them, and I remember being
Speaker 1: struck like cold from that, like you would say that
Speaker 1: to each other, like no one said that to each
Speaker 1: other and my family ever until we were really older adults,
Speaker 1: and even then it was difficult. So I remember when
Speaker 1: I had my first child, when Parker, who was now eighteen,
Speaker 1: the 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 Bob Blakey
Speaker 1: 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 died, like all of
Speaker 1: the domesticity went out of the house, and it was
Speaker 1: 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: men raise it conjures. Up in her hometown of Coomack
Speaker 1: Long Island, not far from where I grew up, Rosie
Speaker 1: began to plot out her future in show business. You know,
Speaker 1: I never wanted to be a talk show host. That
Speaker 1: was never my goal. I wanted to be on Broadway,
Speaker 1: so you know, I wanted to be a Bette Midler
Speaker 1: backup singer, one of the Harletts. So when I was,
Speaker 1: you know, in in Comac High School South in nine nine,
Speaker 1: and I would take the train in and see Matinee
Speaker 1: every 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 Clowns and a Half Shell one
Speaker 1: of my first shows ever. You know, I didn't grow
Speaker 1: up listening to Johnny Carson like every comic tells you.
Speaker 1: I didn't, you know, admired to be like my mother.
Speaker 1: You didn't want to stand up either. I never thought
Speaker 1: of it. My mother didn't like John Rivers. My mother
Speaker 1: thought she was mean. And I remember my mother telling
Speaker 1: me Tody Fields was a real comedian, Philis Diller was
Speaker 1: a real comedian, but that Joan Rivers is not nice.
Speaker 1: And she said you never go far in self exactly.
Speaker 1: And Joan was made fun of Elizabeth Taylor, which I
Speaker 1: think to my mother was sacraseck. You know, so I
Speaker 1: never like thought of it. So when I was in
Speaker 1: high school, I would do the play for the seniors, right,
Speaker 1: everybody makes fun of the teachers and like a Saturday
Speaker 1: and night life type thing the senior year and I
Speaker 1: was a freshman and they knew that I was sort
Speaker 1: of 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 wanted to be a stand up. I'm like, God,
Speaker 1: I don't know how to understand up, because well, I
Speaker 1: own a club, east Side comedy club Huntington's near you.
Speaker 1: Why don't you come and do stand up? Okay, what
Speaker 1: what year is that? That is nineteen seventy eight? What
Speaker 1: is a stand up comedy club like in Huntington's in
Speaker 1: nine seventy eight? Well, I was sixteen years old. I
Speaker 1: just got my license, but I wasn't really old enough
Speaker 1: to get into clubs. So I took my neighbor, Dory
Speaker 1: Norton's license member when they were paper and you could
Speaker 1: take a little pin and scrape, so I had fake id.
Speaker 1: Career is built on a crime, actually without a debt.
Speaker 1: I was impersonated, wouldn't um So I went in and
Speaker 1: you know, when you're sixteen years old, You're fearless, right. Also,
Speaker 1: everybody I knew from my high school showed up that
Speaker 1: night because it was a Saturday night or something, and
Speaker 1: he let me go on and do a few minutes,
Speaker 1: and I killed because everybody I knew was in the room, right,
Speaker 1: So I'd make jokes like Marylyn's going out with Mitchell
Speaker 1: and Mike doesn't know, and all my friends would be
Speaker 1: like and 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 then 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 HUD 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 so 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 sign Fells
Speaker 1: act almost verbatim, and I get off stage and Ritchie
Speaker 1: and you know, a bunch of other comics are standing around,
Speaker 1: said would you get that material? I said, this guy
Speaker 1: named Jerry who was on MERV Griffin yesterday. They go,
Speaker 1: you're not allowed to do that. Like why not? They go,
Speaker 1: you have to write your own jokes, and like, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, strikes and doesn't write her own songs? Did
Speaker 1: you do? Well? Did the audience like? And they didn't
Speaker 1: you hear those? Because they were laughing jokes a joke.
Speaker 1: I have to write the jokes. Nuts, Harold Arlen wrote
Speaker 1: that song, that stuff, and so you know that. Then
Speaker 1: I they said, well, why don't you just hang around here,
Speaker 1: and uh, you can watch? So I started watching, right.
Speaker 1: I started going there almost every night watching comics, and
Speaker 1: the crowd like, well back then it was sort of
Speaker 1: the Heyday was starting with the hey Day, like Eddie
Speaker 1: Murphy had just gotten on Saturday Night Live. So somebody
Speaker 1: from our little club broke out to the big time
Speaker 1: and comic clubs were kind of hot in the eighties.
Speaker 1: You know, I sort of hit Yeah, I hit the
Speaker 1: wave at the exactly the right time. Michael said that
Speaker 1: to me once. He said that when Saturday Night Live
Speaker 1: started back then in the mid seventies seventy five, he said,
Speaker 1: they were like six comedy clubs in the United States exactly,
Speaker 1: and you knew every stand up working. There was a
Speaker 1: time when I started where I knew every female comments
Speaker 1: working working in the country, right, and everybody knew each other,
Speaker 1: and everybody would help each other out. Hey, there's a
Speaker 1: club Tickles and War in Ohio. I can talk to
Speaker 1: the guy for you. You wouldn't have to audition because
Speaker 1: you knew somebody who went there. And a lot of
Speaker 1: times I'd go to the clubs and they pick you
Speaker 1: up in the car at the airport and they'd have
Speaker 1: a sign and they'd be driving you back to the
Speaker 1: comedy condo and the guy go, you know, you're the
Speaker 1: fourth girl I had. The last three sucked. If you win, good,
Speaker 1: I'm never book and a girl again. I was like,
Speaker 1: no pressure, you know, just my entire gender is writing
Speaker 1: on this, so um, you know. The k comic called
Speaker 1: me and said, come back, and then I did. I
Speaker 1: was hanging out there and then I would do open
Speaker 1: mic night. So Shirley Hemphill, 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 night. Right, she's
Speaker 1: the headliner and she's there are a day earl watching
Speaker 1: open mic night. I come off the stage. She comes
Speaker 1: over to me and 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 going to exactly, my head
Speaker 1: was going to explode, and so she really helped my career.
Speaker 1: I started doing that and then I never stopped and
Speaker 1: you did that until Star Search was two when you
Speaker 1: were on. 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: the show. What was that like back then for you? Well,
Speaker 1: it was unbelief people, because unlike huge and unlike today
Speaker 1: where there are so many media platforms and there are
Speaker 1: so many shows like it, we had four channels, five maybe,
Speaker 1: And I remember my nana whenever somebody was on, like
Speaker 1: Tody Fields was on MERV Griffin or the Don Ho Show,
Speaker 1: which was on in twelve and the I'd have my
Speaker 1: nana press play and record on the cassette player so
Speaker 1: I could listen to Tody Fields on the shows that
Speaker 1: I would miss at school. And I think back about
Speaker 1: that now and it's kind of trippy. Was the Fireplace?
Speaker 1: Oh my god? Totally? So what happened was Star Search
Speaker 1: was so popular and I was on the second season.
Speaker 1: Comics had two minutes, hundred and twenty seconds to do materials.
Speaker 1: Do you have a clean routine. Oh yeah, always have
Speaker 1: a clean routine. Oh no, not in clubs necessarily. But
Speaker 1: I hadn't, you know, enough stuff. The problem was I
Speaker 1: kept winning. So I had enough clean material for like
Speaker 1: five weeks, and then I kept winning and I was
Speaker 1: like ship. So I called up comics who are my friends,
Speaker 1: and said, can I use that? Bit about this? Can
Speaker 1: I use that? And they a lot of them said yes,
Speaker 1: you know, Jeanette Barber, let me use a lot of bits,
Speaker 1: Carol Henry, let me use bits. And you know, I
Speaker 1: had people trying to help me. And so then I lost,
Speaker 1: and I eventually, but I won like god like. It
Speaker 1: was like twelve thousand dollars al or like fourteen thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: and I remember thinking I couldn't believe it. I couldn't
Speaker 1: believe it. I went for the final, a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollar thing, and I lost, and uh, I remember never
Speaker 1: being so nervous in my life. You know, TV was
Speaker 1: so different back then. In they put you up at
Speaker 1: the Sunset Strip, Right, it was at Sunset and Vine
Speaker 1: where they filmed it. And I didn't have any money. Right,
Speaker 1: they give you per diem, but I didn't know to
Speaker 1: get per diem so I had. All that I had
Speaker 1: in my pocket was like, you know, forty dollars. So
Speaker 1: I'd walk every day to Carney's, you know that hot
Speaker 1: Dog's cheer on Sunset and for a dollar four you
Speaker 1: could get fries, a small coke, and a hot dog.
Speaker 1: And that's all I had. So it's so funny. You
Speaker 1: watch it. You watch me losing weight every single week
Speaker 1: because I didn't. I didn't really, you know, but I
Speaker 1: ended up winning all this money. And I went from
Speaker 1: being an opening act to being a headliner from Star
Speaker 1: Search overnight, and then you get into the movie business.
Speaker 1: Then I become a DJ, 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 Igby's Comedy
Speaker 1: Club in Okay, and Dana Carvey was was auditioning to
Speaker 1: get on SNL and I was the next comic up
Speaker 1: and the way, this is one of my friends. And
Speaker 1: they said, we're not dropping the check until after your set.
Speaker 1: So well, Brandon and they wanted the check because they
Speaker 1: had seen Dana I was on and I killed right now.
Speaker 1: It's I had a decade under my belt of doing
Speaker 1: stand up right, so um. They came up to me
Speaker 1: after the show, Brandon Tarnikoff, and said, Hi, I want
Speaker 1: you to call this number at NBC tomorrow. We have
Speaker 1: a job for you. And I called my sister. Was
Speaker 1: like three in the morning, New York time. I said,
Speaker 1: I got on SNL. Oh my god, Brandon Tarnikoff was
Speaker 1: here with Lauren Michael's and I'm gonna be on SNL.
Speaker 1: And I walk in the next day to NBC and
Speaker 1: they said, we're gonna put you on. Give me a break,
Speaker 1: and I was like now, I was still thrilled to
Speaker 1: be on TV. And so that was the show. I
Speaker 1: did about ten episodes of that in the last season
Speaker 1: after that. That was eighty six and then eighty eight.
Speaker 1: They were auditioning VJs for VH one and at the
Speaker 1: improv with Budd Freedman and I went there and I
Speaker 1: did my set and the guy came out and he said,
Speaker 1: you're really good, but you don't really look like MTV.
Speaker 1: And I said, I know when he goes, but we
Speaker 1: have another station, v H one, and at that time
Speaker 1: it was reda Coolidge. I don't know if you remember.
Speaker 1: And so he said, you wanted an audition for that,
Speaker 1: you'd have to fly yourself to New York. I said,
Speaker 1: all right, So I flew my play White Wedding like
Speaker 1: nine times a day, exactly right. And they said, you
Speaker 1: know you can audition. So I went on camera and
Speaker 1: I auditioned and went home to l A and then
Speaker 1: I wrote him a thank you note, Steve Leeds, I said,
Speaker 1: thanks for the shot. I really appreciate it. And he
Speaker 1: was so moved that somebody wrote him a thank you
Speaker 1: note that he sent the tape over to the v
Speaker 1: H one people. The guy who was hiring is named
Speaker 1: Ed Harrington, very Irish guy. He saw Rosie O'Donnell and
Speaker 1: he hired me. So it was a thank you note
Speaker 1: that got me to that. I did that for about
Speaker 1: two years. What was that like? It was because it
Speaker 1: seems like for the person who wanted to the clams
Speaker 1: on the hashell career, you meander and you here and
Speaker 1: here where it takes you. What was it like for
Speaker 1: you to be doing that? Well? Everyone everyone said not
Speaker 1: to do it. People who were quote unquote advising my career,
Speaker 1: like Bud Freeman or you know, I didn't even have
Speaker 1: an agent really any because I knew it was in
Speaker 1: twenty three million homes. And I thought that it would
Speaker 1: teach me how to be conversational versus presentational. Presentational is
Speaker 1: what you do with stand up. You've already prepared it.
Speaker 1: It's a wrapped package. They undo the bow, they undo
Speaker 1: the thing, kaboom, there's the joke, right, But this is
Speaker 1: more conversational. Can you carry on a conversation with a
Speaker 1: camera and treat it like a person? And I thought
Speaker 1: it was a skill that would really help me. And
Speaker 1: I also thought that many millions of people seeing you,
Speaker 1: you can't say no. Was it also about money? It
Speaker 1: was a hundred thousand dollars because I don't want to assume,
Speaker 1: but are you like me where a lot of the
Speaker 1: decisions I made was about money. Yeah, at that time,
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, twenty one maybe, and to
Speaker 1: get a hundred grand because I remember saying to them,
Speaker 1: I'm giving up a lot of money to not go
Speaker 1: on the road because I was a good money in
Speaker 1: the road and you would have to definitely cover that.
Speaker 1: And so they came up with a hundred grand. So
Speaker 1: what I would do is it was eight hours a day,
Speaker 1: but you could film that in about two hours. It
Speaker 1: was four breaks an hour at two minutes a break,
Speaker 1: so they would give you the pictures that you had
Speaker 1: to do, like you know, this is Rosie O'donnald coming
Speaker 1: at You on v H one Video Hits one. The
Speaker 1: other music television that was Whitney Houston, her seven single
Speaker 1: offer debut album, Whitney Houston is doing VH one To
Speaker 1: Go Go our dance show only here on VH one
Speaker 1: Saturday nights eight to eleven. But that was about fourteen seconds.
Speaker 1: Now I had a minute and a half left to
Speaker 1: fill and there's nobody but me and two cameramen. So
Speaker 1: my goal was to get the cameraman to laugh so
Speaker 1: that the camera would jiggle right. So that was that
Speaker 1: was my goal. I want to go back and see tape,
Speaker 1: see if I can find that jiggle camera. Bet you can't.
Speaker 1: I bet I can't. Yeah, And so I did that
Speaker 1: for about two years, and that's how Penny Marshall saw me.
Speaker 1: She saw you on VH 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: students and she's saying I ordered salad, and I start
Speaker 1: making her laugh. I'm like, here, take my salad, give
Speaker 1: me a dessert. You're such a and I put her
Speaker 1: her luggage. I'm not just making her laugh, right, And
Speaker 1: so it turns out she's an agent. She's a new
Speaker 1: agent at William Moore. She's Julie Roberts Agents 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 Loser drawer for kids
Speaker 1: on Disney. They're gonna pay me fifty thousand dollars a year,
Speaker 1: five year contract and I'm gonna host that show. And
Speaker 1: she said, you're not. And I'm now your agent, and
Speaker 1: 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: reesa Shapiro of course, and she um becomes my agent.
Speaker 1: She gets a phone call, Hi, do you represent that VJ?
Speaker 1: Can she play baseball? She calls me up, She says,
Speaker 1: can you play baseball? And baseball? I said, if there's
Speaker 1: one thing I can do better than Julia Roberts, it's
Speaker 1: base all And so I went and I auditioned for
Speaker 1: the movie. You had to play baseball to even get
Speaker 1: a reading, and I, of course, I'm very good at baseball.
Speaker 1: So um, I went in and got the part. So
Speaker 1: everywhere you're going, you're showing up, obviously with stand up,
Speaker 1: and then you're making the guys laughing, jiggle the camera,
Speaker 1: and there's a velocity and a pace and an energy
Speaker 1: to what you're doing. And now you're making movies, And
Speaker 1: does that become a different muscle for you to sit
Speaker 1: there and go, man, this is slow and boring. Yes,
Speaker 1: But I love the camaraderie. I love the set of
Speaker 1: League their Own with all the people playing baseball and
Speaker 1: oh no, it's the actors, the camera guys and like
Speaker 1: you know, all of the crew doing the thing where
Speaker 1: they picked the cards and exactly, and it was so
Speaker 1: loving and so beautiful and stand up you're alone. You're
Speaker 1: going on these clubs. You know, for ten years, fifteen years,
Speaker 1: I was alone on the road. You know, I'd go
Speaker 1: by myself. I had to get in a plane and
Speaker 1: I'd fly to someplace in the middle of the country
Speaker 1: and they picked me up and feel homeless. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you feel lonely. And then so when you go to
Speaker 1: make a league of their own and you get the
Speaker 1: responsory had made. The movie is a huge success. Everybody
Speaker 1: loves you, blah blah blah. Do you say to yourself, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, which is I'm not assuming you do. But
Speaker 1: often people sit there and thinking, well, this is it.
Speaker 1: I'm a movie star and I'm gonna be lighting one
Speaker 1: off the other for the next forty years. Well, I
Speaker 1: will tell you this. When they said that Madonna was
Speaker 1: going to be playing my best friend, you know, we
Speaker 1: 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 had 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 you know. Some people have said to me,
Speaker 1: I thought you guys were lovering. I'm like, are you
Speaker 1: out of your mind? Like you know something? Even Sandra
Speaker 1: said to me away from Madonna. Please, I'm such an
Speaker 1: Irish Catholic girl, like you can count on both hands
Speaker 1: how 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 mining. 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 an actor,
Speaker 1: she was amazing because she I love to improve eyes,
Speaker 1: and I come to find out later in all the
Speaker 1: movies I did after that, not every director likes this.
Speaker 1: But she would go, you know, okay, somebody got to
Speaker 1: go over there, catch a bull full and just stay
Speaker 1: come up with a hot door hope, but 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 who was the most options
Speaker 1: and who I cast anybody and had anybody, and she
Speaker 1: chose you. And I'm so intimidated because it's Nora Fron
Speaker 1: and I've read every single thing she ever wrote in
Speaker 1: her life, and I knew about her sister and her
Speaker 1: parents and what they had written. So I go into
Speaker 1: the app Thorpe, into her big, you know apartment that
Speaker 1: has a library full of and I'm looking at what
Speaker 1: book she's reading and I'm you know, and she calls
Speaker 1: me in and she says hello, and I say hello,
Speaker 1: and I'm still like happy to be there. And we
Speaker 1: clicked right away, and she's like wow. She goes, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, and she goes and gets the script off,
Speaker 1: the facts that Delia had been working on and pieces
Speaker 1: of a new scene, and she goes, read this, and
Speaker 1: I read that, and then I left and I called
Speaker 1: my agent in the car and said, I got the job.
Speaker 1: And she said, you know, this is your second movie audition.
Speaker 1: You don't really understand. You got the first one, but
Speaker 1: you're not probably going to get this. And I said, no,
Speaker 1: I got the job. And I did. And the reason
Speaker 1: Nora told me was that night at dinner, she said, oh,
Speaker 1: I I interviewed this girl today. I think I might hire. Her.
Speaker 1: Name's Rosie O'Donnell and her son, Jacob, who was ten
Speaker 1: at the time, who was a Madonna freak. Was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, mom, I know her. And he ended
Speaker 1: up being a gay man now who was a writer
Speaker 1: at the the Times, right, a great guy. And and
Speaker 1: then Nora ended up getting me an apartment in the
Speaker 1: app Thorpe after the movie, and Jacob used to come
Speaker 1: over to my apartment and tell me about his being
Speaker 1: gay and not knowing how to tell his mom, and
Speaker 1: so I sort of helped. What did you tell him?
Speaker 1: I helped him come out. His mother knew, but you know,
Speaker 1: his mother said to me, do you think he's gay?
Speaker 1: I'm like, yes, I do, right, And he was like
Speaker 1: ten or eleven. She goes, I think he might be too.
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, he is. Some nights, I'd come home
Speaker 1: when he's like fourteen, he's drunk outside. I'm like, come here,
Speaker 1: you're gonna go up to my apartment. Come with us.
Speaker 1: I take him up to the apartment. I'd call Nora,
Speaker 1: I'd go I have him. I'll bring him back in
Speaker 1: a little while. Right. It was like living in Queens.
Speaker 1: Everybody knew each other. But he was a great kid.
Speaker 1: And you know, I have pictures of him playing with Parker.
Speaker 1: You know, when Parker was a baby, and then I
Speaker 1: have a tick picture of them when we did Love
Speaker 1: Laws and what I wore at the opening night Parker
Speaker 1: six foot something standing next to Jacob, And it's just
Speaker 1: so weird how life goes like that. I'm not big
Speaker 1: on the whole gay identity thing in terms of you
Speaker 1: know that that story, because I'm sure you've exhausted that.
Speaker 1: But what I'm curious about is how over the ark
Speaker 1: of a long career, now that's changed for you. And
Speaker 1: it was being a gay woman, being a gay performer,
Speaker 1: going back to you know, it is seventy eight and
Speaker 1: you're at the club in Huntington's on through. Now it's
Speaker 1: many many years, it's a thirty five years since you
Speaker 1: were a kid doing this stuff. How's that changed for you?
Speaker 1: Remarkable the amount of change that's happened just in my lifetime.
Speaker 1: You know, I was coming out of therapy two weeks
Speaker 1: ago in Nyack, New York, and I see two high
Speaker 1: school girls holding hands walking through the parking lot and
Speaker 1: like I almost fill up with two I stopped them.
Speaker 1: I said, excuse me, now, they have no idea right there,
Speaker 1: the there's a cut off. My fame is over, right, now,
Speaker 1: I know there are people who still but it's not
Speaker 1: like it was. Right. So I said, excuse me, and
Speaker 1: they sort of like, what's this old lady's talking to me?
Speaker 1: I said, I just want to tell you that I'm
Speaker 1: a fifty one year old gay woman, and as a
Speaker 1: gay woman. To see you two girls, are you in
Speaker 1: high school? They're like, yeah, we're in tenth grade. To
Speaker 1: see you holding hands in the middle of town walking
Speaker 1: through it just it moves me so much. And they're like,
Speaker 1: oh really, oh thanks, all right, see you here. I
Speaker 1: am like, come here. I don't know. You know, people
Speaker 1: sort of knew that I was gay, in my opinion
Speaker 1: in show business because I never hit it. It's never
Speaker 1: like I pretended to have a boy friend or although
Speaker 1: people say I did that with Tom Cruise, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't a sexual thing with him. I still have a
Speaker 1: crush on him, you know, but it's not like I
Speaker 1: wanted to screw him. I just thought, God, that is
Speaker 1: a that is something about the breakfast, exactly like to
Speaker 1: have him, you know, with no shirt on, painting something
Speaker 1: in my house, you know, and then leaving after he
Speaker 1: gave me your breakfast exactly right. So anyway, people knew
Speaker 1: was what I thought, right. But I remember like when
Speaker 1: Ellen called me up and said, I'm going to have
Speaker 1: my character Ellen Morgan come out as a lesbian on
Speaker 1: my TV show, and I remember thinking, why the hell
Speaker 1: is she doing this? She's going to ruin her entire
Speaker 1: career and her life. It was such a foreign concept.
Speaker 1: This is pre Will and Grace. Okay, no one had
Speaker 1: ever even considered it. The only people who were out
Speaker 1: were rock stars. There was no actor or actress or
Speaker 1: comedian who was out. You know. I don't remember even
Speaker 1: Charles Nelson Riley wasn't out. I mean, you know, thurdly
Speaker 1: gayish people. And I remember thinking, she's making a huge mistake,
Speaker 1: you know, And then there was that tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: fall out that happened afterwards. I was like, it was
Speaker 1: pained me for her. It really did. Now listen in hindsight,
Speaker 1: Oh my god. The courage that it took for her
Speaker 1: to do that at the time she did it, in
Speaker 1: the way she did it was pretty unbelievable, you know.
Speaker 1: I I did not possess that. And so she did that,
Speaker 1: and then Will and Grace came on and I remember
Speaker 1: them telling me at my show, oh, there's a new
Speaker 1: sitcom that's starting. It's about a gay man living with
Speaker 1: a straight girl. And I go, that will never work.
Speaker 1: Remember Love Sydney with Tony Randall. He had his dead
Speaker 1: partner's picture on the mantel and the Catholic Church was
Speaker 1: protesting and it was often two weeks. And this was
Speaker 1: Tony Randolphs right. So I thought that will never work.
Speaker 1: So and Will and Grace comes on. Not only does
Speaker 1: it work, it blows up queer eye for the straight guy.
Speaker 1: It's like the society culture we have changed in such
Speaker 1: a quick amount of time that people don't even realize it,
Speaker 1: you know, to think that in my lifetime, in my career,
Speaker 1: that you can be an out performer actor playing against
Speaker 1: type Neil Patrick Harris playing a womanizer on that show,
Speaker 1: be out married with twin boys and it doesn't hurt
Speaker 1: your career and it doesn't do anything to you know.
Speaker 1: So in a way, it's the most beautifully astounding inspirational
Speaker 1: thing that I can think about it in my fifty
Speaker 1: one years of living now, in the time that you
Speaker 1: from being a young woman and a performer in this
Speaker 1: business and you're making your way and you're succeeding and
Speaker 1: you're a gay woman. Did you ever think about marriage kids, family? Like,
Speaker 1: when did that polaroid begin to become more in focus.
Speaker 1: I always knew I wanted kids, you did, always, But
Speaker 1: I never thought I would get married to a man.
Speaker 1: I mean I didn't really of course, you know, I
Speaker 1: would not have turned that down. But I know, I
Speaker 1: just you know, I dated one guy when I was
Speaker 1: twenty 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, um,
Speaker 1: I dated this guy, and I remember thinking, maybe I'm
Speaker 1: not gay. Look at this, Maybe I'm not gay. But
Speaker 1: 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 sets. 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 his name. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you still in touch with him? Um, not so much.
Speaker 1: We had been for about ten years. It was I'm
Speaker 1: fifty now, right, so it was half a life ago.
Speaker 1: But did you leave all those people behind? Did you
Speaker 1: shed a skin when you became famous and went into
Speaker 1: the business, Because for me, all my friendships began when
Speaker 1: I got in this business. It's interesting. I have two friends,
Speaker 1: Jeanie and Jackie. They're my friends since I was in
Speaker 1: elementary school and they're still my best friends. And the
Speaker 1: three of us see each other at least, you know,
Speaker 1: Jackie probably twice a week, Jeanie probably because she's out
Speaker 1: on the island at least once a month. And the
Speaker 1: three of us are like sisters and their family to me.
Speaker 1: Jackie's mother raised me, you know, after my mother died,
Speaker 1: I would eat dinner at their house like five nights
Speaker 1: a week. She bought me my first bra, She bought me,
Speaker 1: you know, tampons when I needed them as a kid.
Speaker 1: She was a mother, right, so, and she's still alive
Speaker 1: Bernis and so I see Jackie like like a sister
Speaker 1: all the time. But aside from those two, I don't
Speaker 1: see anyone from high school. I don't see anyone from
Speaker 1: my old stomping grounds on Long Island. And most of
Speaker 1: my friends, aside from those two, are friends that I'm
Speaker 1: out in this business because it's very hard for people
Speaker 1: to understand. It is lonely, and it's lonely, and it's
Speaker 1: hard to explain it to someone else because they it's
Speaker 1: held up as the be all and end all. It's
Speaker 1: held up as and it it really isn't. The reality
Speaker 1: of it is very different than what you expected from it.
Speaker 1: I'll never forget. This is gonna seem mundane, perhaps, but
Speaker 1: this really defines what I'm talking about. Im I would
Speaker 1: be sitting like I'm in the Canadian Rocky shooting a
Speaker 1: movie with Tony Hopkins, and I'll never forget. My assistant
Speaker 1: would FedEx me my mail and I pick up this
Speaker 1: thing and it says, you know the dates of the
Speaker 1: Bacon exhibit at the met and it's going to close
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to get back there and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna miss the Bacon exhibit. I felt so awful because
Speaker 1: I thought, I'm missing my life, I'm missing everything like
Speaker 1: what I did thirty Rock. People say, why did you
Speaker 1: love thirty rockets because they would work the schedule with me.
Speaker 1: When you're in the movie business, they are so punishingly
Speaker 1: unempathetic because they got ninety days to do it. They've
Speaker 1: got to get this thing done. Cutting days and cutting
Speaker 1: costs is what they're all about. Well, I remember when
Speaker 1: I was on my talk show. You were saying, I
Speaker 1: really want to get a sitcom. I really want to
Speaker 1: do a sitcom with me. Remember we were talking about it.
Speaker 1: He said, we're gonna do Jackie Gleeson and you're Jackie Gleason.
Speaker 1: And I'm yeah. I said, You're gonna be the brassy,
Speaker 1: tough character and I'm gonna be your withering husband. Right. So,
Speaker 1: I remember when people were saying that there was a
Speaker 1: show thirty Rock and Alec Bolden, and some people are
Speaker 1: saying to me, he's not gonna do a sick I'm like, yes,
Speaker 1: he is, you know, because I knew because I had spoke,
Speaker 1: we had spoken about it, how taxing it is, and
Speaker 1: I knew what you were craving was some kind of
Speaker 1: a normal schedule, Like a sitcom is the perfect gig
Speaker 1: for 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'donnald gives me the
Speaker 1: lowdown on what it's like having a baby in your fifties.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing,
Speaker 1: this is Alec Baldwin. For much of her career, Rosie
Speaker 1: O'Donnell has created and supported numerous children's charities, from issues
Speaker 1: like pediatric aids to making sure New York City kids
Speaker 1: and particularly inner city kids, can see a real play
Speaker 1: with real actors on a Broadway stage. If you live
Speaker 1: in New York and haven't been to Broadway, as Rosie says,
Speaker 1: it's quote like living in Hawaii and not having access
Speaker 1: to the beach. Rosie realized she wanted children of her own,
Speaker 1: so at age thirty three, she adopted a baby, boy, Parker.
Speaker 1: The balancing act between motherhood and career, particularly one in
Speaker 1: the entertainment industry, took her by surprise. When Parker was
Speaker 1: a baby, you know, I didn't know anyone who went
Speaker 1: to nanny. I grew up like you did. There was
Speaker 1: an unheard of thing. I didn't even know anyone what
Speaker 1: a babysitter, right. Besides, somebody would come over for three
Speaker 1: hours when your parents went to you know, red Lobster.
Speaker 1: So um. I did Harry at the Spy, my first
Speaker 1: movie after he was born, and he was about three
Speaker 1: or four months old, maybe five months old, and I
Speaker 1: took him to Canada to film, and I asked my
Speaker 1: cleaning lady to come with me to watch him because
Speaker 1: I didn't have anybody to help. So she came. And
Speaker 1: the third day that I came home from a twelve
Speaker 1: hour day on the set, he wouldn't come to me.
Speaker 1: I would come here, buddy, and he would cry. He wouldn't.
Speaker 1: He was staying with Maria, and I remember at that moment,
Speaker 1: I called my agent and said, you need to get
Speaker 1: me a job that's going to keep me in New
Speaker 1: York because I don't want him growing up on movie sets.
Speaker 1: I want him to have his own bedroom. I want
Speaker 1: him to know his cousins. I want him to have
Speaker 1: a normal life and So that's the reason I did
Speaker 1: my talk show was because I wanted you and I
Speaker 1: it's a mirror. That's why I did thirty Rock and
Speaker 1: and my daughter lived in l A. But I said
Speaker 1: to Lauren, he said, what's it gonna take. I will
Speaker 1: give you off every Monday and every Friday, any weekend
Speaker 1: you want to go to go see your daughter who
Speaker 1: was in l A. Which in the beginning I would do.
Speaker 1: And then as my daughter got older, I mean I
Speaker 1: stopped going every other weekend because like I would drive
Speaker 1: out there and like drive my daughter to a party
Speaker 1: and drop her off. Believe me, I know teenagers and
Speaker 1: its health. 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,
Speaker 1: um all those movies in a row that like the
Speaker 1: number one movie, three summers in a row, right, So
Speaker 1: first I did A League, and then Sleepless in Seattle
Speaker 1: and then The flint Stones. Well that's pretty astonishing, you know,
Speaker 1: especially because it's like those wasn't a trained actress. I
Speaker 1: was a comic writer. Didn't even really go to college.
Speaker 1: I went from 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 and
Speaker 1: I want to go do that. She's like, are you
Speaker 1: kidding me? You're 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 audition for Greece and I
Speaker 1: got it on Broadway and I said, when I'm done
Speaker 1: with this run, I'm going to adopt a baby. So
Speaker 1: I was thirty two. How long a year? And can
Speaker 1: I tell you, Alec, dear lord 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 commit to Yeah, Lord, I know,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry I missed it, but boy, that's something. That's something.
Speaker 1: And uh, so I decided I was going to adopt
Speaker 1: a baby. And it wasn't. I wasn't dating anyone, wasn't
Speaker 1: like you know, I was. I saw I was seeing
Speaker 1: a girl who was in the cast of Greece. But
Speaker 1: 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 there.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like I was doing a week. I was
Speaker 1: just adopting a baby myself. And then I went and
Speaker 1: did Harry at the Spy and said to my agent,
Speaker 1: I gotta stay in New York. And at the time
Speaker 1: Cathy Lee was threatening to quit. I said, get me
Speaker 1: that gig with Reach and they said, oh, she's stanging,
Speaker 1: but they are willing to give you your own show
Speaker 1: like that, and I said, well, the only thing I'd
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 Halee Helium, Balloon's You
Speaker 1: Got It and fun cooking segments and everybody likes each other.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like scandalized 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 over. I
Speaker 1: was just gone, he's not coming down here. Actually he
Speaker 1: was around then, and he was so sweet to me
Speaker 1: and Mike Douglas because it was a tribute sort of
Speaker 1: to both of them and Dina Shore who was gone.
Speaker 1: But you know, those are the shows I watched as
Speaker 1: a kid. That's not funny how when you talked before
Speaker 1: about a world without VCRs and stuff for them When
Speaker 1: when we were kids, when we watched TV. I'd watch
Speaker 1: Dina shot me too. I'd sit in my house and
Speaker 1: be like, I don't know who the hell is brought is,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna watch because the point is what else
Speaker 1: was there? There? Was learned to like those shows or
Speaker 1: digest them because it's like, what the hell are we
Speaker 1: going to do? Mcgilla, Garilla the Little Rascals, right, or
Speaker 1: 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, reformat. They were afraid that this
Speaker 1: wouldn't work because it hadn't been on in twenty five years, right,
Speaker 1: And they were afraid that I would become just like
Speaker 1: the other shows where people were punching each other and
Speaker 1: you know this, I had an affair with him, and
Speaker 1: that I would change the genre correct and I said
Speaker 1: I will never do that. I will just walk away
Speaker 1: before I do that. And they said, all right, we'll
Speaker 1: try it. So they were hesitant, the station owners. You
Speaker 1: can I it's not your baby exactly, everybody. Please. I
Speaker 1: couldn't do that. I really could of how they sleep.
Speaker 1: I watched Moria is still on. I'm like, thank god,
Speaker 1: what to seeing Connie talk about at night? Okay? Today
Speaker 1: I had two treads Best 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 am only doing uh five, I was a four
Speaker 1: year deal. I said, I'm only doing four years because
Speaker 1: he would be fun. They said yes. But in year
Speaker 1: one it was such a big hit that they said,
Speaker 1: please give us two more years. Please, We'll give you,
Speaker 1: you know, the Oprah deal. So I agreed to do six.
Speaker 1: Now in my fifth year, they said, please sign up.
Speaker 1: That's when I begged you to do the Jackie Gleason
Speaker 1: s off. And you turned to me and said you
Speaker 1: you leaned into me very comming. You said, I Aunt,
Speaker 1: I'll never figurt that you'd lean to me. And you said,
Speaker 1: I can't. You said, I'm about to sign a deal.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make quote that sick Oprah money exactly. I
Speaker 1: remember seing the going, fuck, it was money. It was
Speaker 1: sick Opra money. Yeah. So I signed on for two
Speaker 1: more years, and then you know, in the fifth year,
Speaker 1: they kept saying, you know, at one year left, come on,
Speaker 1: we're gonna offer you this. Honestly, I like the truth
Speaker 1: is I felt, if you have a hundred million dollars
Speaker 1: in the bank and you think you need a hundred
Speaker 1: million more, you're missing your life. I had three children
Speaker 1: at the time, right, I had three kids under the
Speaker 1: age of five, and my mother died at forty. I
Speaker 1: was thirty nine. My show ended right when I was forty.
Speaker 1: I thought, any day they're going to diagnose me with
Speaker 1: breast cancer. I'm gonna be gone. I wanted to go
Speaker 1: spend the time raising my children the way my mother
Speaker 1: didn't get to. So there was no amount of money.
Speaker 1: They kept upping the money and upping the money. And
Speaker 1: you know, Dick Robertson, Dick Robinson has said, to me,
Speaker 1: who's still around the older I 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: I don't dispute that. I mean, that's obviously very very important.
Speaker 1: I made a lot of my choices around them as well,
Speaker 1: and continue to now that I'm having another baby. 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 time 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 Barbara
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 show biz community. But when that show took off
Speaker 1: and I had literally interviewed everyone from Walter Cronkite to
Speaker 1: you know, Joan Plowwright like to, you know, everyone was
Speaker 1: happy to be on your shop exactly, and it was,
Speaker 1: you know, it was the first one of its kind.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of them now. And you know, Ellen
Speaker 1: has has done it amazingly well. And she had all
Speaker 1: of my same producers, she had Jim Terratory, she had
Speaker 1: the same team, and she went and she did it.
Speaker 1: And I think she's very good at it, you know,
Speaker 1: I really do. But I know that I could not
Speaker 1: have done it any longer than I did it. I
Speaker 1: knew I was not a marathon. And then when you
Speaker 1: stopped what happened, I was, um. I felt free. First
Speaker 1: of all, I had just sort of come out right.
Speaker 1: I had written my first book and it talked about
Speaker 1: my being gay and all of the struggles that I
Speaker 1: had with how to how to announce that. And I
Speaker 1: did it in conjunction with an A C. L U
Speaker 1: case about Forster care because I was a Forster parent
Speaker 1: and blah blah, blah. So I didn't want it just
Speaker 1: to be about hey, like, let's talk about my sex
Speaker 1: life and sexual preference. You know. I wanted it to
Speaker 1: be about something more. So there was a case with
Speaker 1: the Loft and Crew too case down in Florida, two
Speaker 1: men who had adopted this children and they ciril converted
Speaker 1: from HIV positive to negative because both men were nurses,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to take the kids away after they
Speaker 1: ciril converted. So I actually, there's there was a law
Speaker 1: at the time in Florida that gay people could not adopt,
Speaker 1: even the force to chieve children they raised. So 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 Donahue was on again,
Speaker 1: and you know, I a 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 so forth, and do you enjoy that now
Speaker 1: where you don't you're not out there and you're not
Speaker 1: an opinion maker. Yes, but the fall between one and
Speaker 1: the other extreme was intense and sharp and shocking. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I when I was on the cover of Newsweek,
Speaker 1: you know when my show premiered, said the Queen of Nights,
Speaker 1: I remember holding it up on on live TV and saying,
Speaker 1: this is going to bite me in the ass one day,
Speaker 1: because you know what, I'm not that nice. If you
Speaker 1: ever saw my stand up act, I go after people
Speaker 1: and issues that I find abhorrent and repulsive, and I
Speaker 1: present them in a comical way that makes you laugh
Speaker 1: and yet think. So I knew that that was never
Speaker 1: ever the totality of who I was. So um, I
Speaker 1: was not you know, naive enough to think that I
Speaker 1: was going to slimply glide slowly down towards the anonymity
Speaker 1: you know uh, but it was very very harsh, and
Speaker 1: it was very very quick, and it was a very
Speaker 1: big shock. Also, I was sued by the magazine company.
Speaker 1: And when you're sued by a corporation, right, I was
Speaker 1: sued for three million dollars right by this corporation they
Speaker 1: I when my show was ending, I was convinced to
Speaker 1: do a magazine like Oprah did with my name on
Speaker 1: at Rosie, and I was totally had creative control and
Speaker 1: they had the sales kind of control. What happened was
Speaker 1: after my show ended, the guy who worked there said, well,
Speaker 1: you signed a stupid contract and your lawyers weren't good
Speaker 1: and I owned the show and I'm gonna do what
Speaker 1: I want and fired the staff. And UM wanted to
Speaker 1: do like thin or thighs and thirty days and all
Speaker 1: the things that are not me. And I said, well
Speaker 1: you can't do that, and he said, well, you didn't
Speaker 1: see this loophole in the contract. So I remember saying
Speaker 1: to UM, my friends are to some learned people I
Speaker 1: knew who is the toughest and the best female lawyer
Speaker 1: in New York. And they said Mary Joe White and
Speaker 1: Mary Joe White, who brought down the first bombers at
Speaker 1: the nine eleven the college Killia whatever his name, and
Speaker 1: she has just been appointed with the Obama administration. She's
Speaker 1: like a huge mockey. Mark Well. I went into her
Speaker 1: office on a Saturday. She had shorts on and a
Speaker 1: T shirt, and I gave her the contract and I said,
Speaker 1: now I want to ask you. Am I right? Am
Speaker 1: I wrong? She said, well, you're right, and I said,
Speaker 1: She goes, but I don't know that that means you're
Speaker 1: gonna win. I said, but I am right. What I'm
Speaker 1: saying is right that this man cannot take what I've
Speaker 1: worked for for twenty years, my name and what it
Speaker 1: represents and reform at him because I signed a contract
Speaker 1: and made me into Susanne Summers correct or who actually
Speaker 1: like and think is very more more like make me
Speaker 1: into a Cosmo girl. Right? And she said, no, you're right,
Speaker 1: and if you're tough enough, you'll win. But they're gonna
Speaker 1: put you through hell. And they did. I was like
Speaker 1: on the cover of the Post like ninety three times.
Speaker 1: And when you came out of it, you prevailed, Yes,
Speaker 1: but it was exhausting, expensive and painful litigation. It certainly
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 pisched you off. What's one thing you were
Speaker 1: involved in that you went to the mat cause waw
Speaker 1: or something or an event, something you really went out
Speaker 1: there and was the most outrageous, the major, the most indignant.
Speaker 1: You know, I think it would probably be um the
Speaker 1: right of gay people to adopt in Florida. We actually
Speaker 1: did a canvassing of of the state of Florida back
Speaker 1: in you know, in the nineties when my show was on,
Speaker 1: because I thought, if we're gonna fight this, we're gonna lobby,
Speaker 1: let's try to see what the what the temperature is
Speaker 1: of the state and found a surprising amount, like disproportionately
Speaker 1: large amount of people would prefer that children had no
Speaker 1: parents than gay parents. That was at the time in
Speaker 1: the nineties. Now look how things have changed now, right
Speaker 1: that the ruling has been overturned, and you know, gays
Speaker 1: are allowed to adopt in pretty much every state I
Speaker 1: think at this point, and we're allowed to get married
Speaker 1: 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, or mean,
Speaker 1: we're here, we are. It's the fiftieth anniversary of JFK's association,
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 want to 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 you know, because honestly,
Speaker 1: you either have the benevolent father image in your mind
Speaker 1: and you can't sam right. It's the cognitive dissidence. Right.
Speaker 1: You can hold two opposing ideas in your brain at
Speaker 1: one time. You can love the United States of America right,
Speaker 1: and I love my country and therefore I want to
Speaker 1: seek exactly right. And therefore democracy demands dissent. And if
Speaker 1: you have questions. That's part of being and I shared
Speaker 1: that we're people doubt our patriotism because we're critical. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you look at my Twitter feed, I'm going to
Speaker 1: go off Twitter. Yes, it's too much negativity, and it's
Speaker 1: too much negativity that I don't get in real life.
Speaker 1: I can walk anywhere even to like, you know, my
Speaker 1: 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 crying people in the world of my experience
Speaker 1: the unanimity of Twitter correct And that's what it is.
Speaker 1: It's like standing on a stage in a dark and
Speaker 1: comedy club and people throwing shit at you and you're
Speaker 1: still trying to do your act. I want to close
Speaker 1: with one thing, and that is I watch people who
Speaker 1: are virtuosic musicians. I mean, I do this announcing for
Speaker 1: the New York Philharmonic. I just went to Long Longs
Speaker 1: benefit on Monday at Carnegie Hall. I have this tremendous, tremendous,
Speaker 1: almost insatiable appetite for the classical repertoire and the people
Speaker 1: who play it well. And I think to myself, you know,
Speaker 1: where is that and what we do like acting. The
Speaker 1: people talk about Olivier and Kevin Klein and you know
Speaker 1: in Colin Firth and all they're really really beautifully etched
Speaker 1: actors of their day. And then I think about you,
Speaker 1: and I think about to be able to talk on
Speaker 1: a talk show and be able to communicate the way
Speaker 1: you did. You remind me in the conversational mode of
Speaker 1: a classical piano player, because you can touch, you can
Speaker 1: do anything, you can play anything. You are funny as hell,
Speaker 1: you're if you're smart. You are so many things. You
Speaker 1: could have done anything. You're so tenacious and you're so smart.
Speaker 1: If this hadn't worked out for you, what was among
Speaker 1: the fallbacks? What might you have done with your life
Speaker 1: for you didn't do this. I never had a fallback
Speaker 1: on purpose, and my dad used to say that all
Speaker 1: the time, you need a fallback, But I knew that
Speaker 1: this career was so difficult to succeed in that if
Speaker 1: you had a fallback, you would fall back. So I
Speaker 1: didn't have one. However, I know I would have been
Speaker 1: a teacher, because it was teachers who saved my life.
Speaker 1: We were in an abusive all. My dad had some
Speaker 1: issues after my mother died and even before, and it
Speaker 1: was teachers in the public school system who saved my life. Literally,
Speaker 1: I don't think I would be here. I don't think,
Speaker 1: you know, when my grandmother died, who had lived with
Speaker 1: us after when my mother had died, you know, when
Speaker 1: she died when I was in high school, all the
Speaker 1: teachers came to the funeral, all the like we were.
Speaker 1: We were five orphan children pretty much who were embraced
Speaker 1: and taken in by the teachers in our communities. And
Speaker 1: I definitely would have been a teacher. I love kids.
Speaker 1: And congratulations because you know, way do you see what
Speaker 1: it feels like doing it at fifty versus doing it
Speaker 1: at thirty. Honey, it's a different gig. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: First of all, it's so much calmer. You're so much
Speaker 1: more relaxed. You're enjoy every moment so much more like
Speaker 1: this baby. First of all, she's a dream. She she
Speaker 1: wakes up and she goes to bed at nine o'clock
Speaker 1: after bottle, wakes up at six, give her a bottle,
Speaker 1: and she sleeps in the bed with us till about
Speaker 1: every night. That's what you know. And Michelle, my wife,
Speaker 1: this is our first kid, goes let's get another one.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you're out of your mind. They don't come
Speaker 1: like this, girm. No, She's just it's a dream and
Speaker 1: I feel younger because of it. I feel like that
Speaker 1: my design, oh my god, al like it like turned
Speaker 1: on every creative. It's just it rebirthed me. It rebirthed
Speaker 1: me in a way that I was not expecting, and
Speaker 1: I'm so thankful for There's something about this experience. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's very different from the other kids. You know, when
Speaker 1: you your first baby, because you only had one, so
Speaker 1: your first baby. I always say, the other kids never
Speaker 1: get what that first kid got. And I'm not the
Speaker 1: first kid in my family, right my brother Eddie is,
Speaker 1: so in a way, this baby feels like the first
Speaker 1: kid all over again. Rosie O'Donnell entertainer, activist, philanthropist extraordinaire
Speaker 1: and above all a mom to five. Imagine the hand
Speaker 1: me downs in that house. 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 extras. This is Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing