Rosie O’Donnell Reveals Rude Ellen DeGeneres Comment She ‘Never Got Over’

Rosie O’Donnell is recalling a comment Ellen DeGeneres made that hurt her feelings and affected her longtime relationship with her. Appearing on Watch What Happens Live on Thursday night, O’Donnell told host Andy Cohen why she never appeared as a guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show throughout its 19-season run.

“We had a little bit of a weird thing,” O’Donnell told Cohen of DeGeneres. “After my show went off the air and hers was coming on the air, Larry King was on with Ellen and he said, ‘Whatever happened to Rosie O’Donnell? Her show went down the tubes. She came out as a lesbian and disappeared!’ And Ellen said, and I’m quoting, ‘I don’t know Rosie. We’re not friends.’”

O’Donnell, 60, said she was stunned by the comment. “I was in bed with Kelli [Carpenter, O’Donnell’s first wife], and I said, ‘DId I just hear that or was that a hallucination, auditory voice in my [head]?’ It hurt my feelings, like a baby, and I never really got over it.” She did say that DeGeneres’ team asked her “once toward the end” of DeGeneres’ tenure to come on the show, but she ultimately declined. She requested to bring someone with her to make it “a little less awkward,” but said the show “didn’t want to do that” so she passed on the opportunity. “I wish her all good things in her life and that she should be well, so there you go,” she concluded.

As a daytime talk show veteran, O’Donnell helped pave the way for DeGeneres, who jokingly came out as “Lebanese” on The Rosie O’Donnell Show in 1996 ahead of her characterlater coming out as a lesbian on her own sitcom, Ellen. At the time, O’Donnell hinted that she, too, was a member of the LGBTQ+ community years before she publicly came out.

While on WWHL, O’Donnell also talked about her beef with Elisabeth Hasselbeck, with whom she co-hosted The View until their infamous 2007 split-screen fight that led to O’Donnell quitting the show over how it was handled. O’Donnell confirmed that she and Hasselbeck haven’t spoken since the fight.