When Tom Selleck stopped by The Rosie O’Donnell Show on May 19, 1999, to promote his then-new movie The Love Letter, Rosie O’Donnell famously confronted Selleck about his support for the National Rifle Association. It was the first time O’Donnell turned an interview with a celebrity into a serious moment on television, and O’Donnell later said she wished she handled it differently. O’Donnell still talks about the moment today, recently commenting about it in a July 2021 interview with PEOPLE.
Since O’Donnell’s show was usually a light-hearted program, the Selleck interview caught more attention than a typical segment at the time. “I think it’s just the first time that I ever challenged a celebrity,” O’Donnell told PEOPLE. “Every other one I was nice to. If they said, ‘Please, let’s not talk about my divorce or my recent drug addiction, drug rehab,’ I would do what they asked.”
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O’Donnell was never a “get you” interviewer, she noted. “Like Johnny Carson taught us if there was egg on anyone’s face, it’s supposed to be on the host, not the guest,” the A League Of Their Own star said. “So I think no one was expecting that I would challenge someone in the way that I did.”
At the time O’Donnell interviewed Selleck, he was supposed to be on the show to promote The Love Letter. Instead, she decided to press him about his support for the controversial gun rights lobbying group. “I didn’t come on your show to have a debate about guns,” a visibly annoyed Selleck told her. “I came on your show to plug a movie. That’s what I’m doing here. Do you think it’s proper to have a debate about the NRA? I’m trying to be fair with you.” He also called it “absurd” for O’Donnell to refer to him as a spokesman for the NRA.
In the immediate aftermath of the episode, O’Donnell agreed to let a deal to appear in KMart ads to expire at the end of 1999. At the time, KMart was one of the largest gun retailers in the country. It was also revealed that the ammunition the Columbine High School shooters used was purchased at a KMart. The Columbine shooting happened just one week before O’Donnell’s interview with Selleck was taped and aired about a month later.
Over the years, Selleck and O’Donnell have both commented on the interview. In 2007, when O’Donnell was still on The View, Selleck told Access Hollywood he no longer held any ill will towards the talk show host. “It’s hard to pick a horse in that particular fight – not that I’m calling Donald [Trump] or Rosie the horse. I’m not starting anything,” the Blue Bloods actor said in 2007. “I still like Rosie. I think she needs to take a deep breath and stop thinking everybody who disagrees with her is evil.”
In 2011, O’Donnell told reporters she probably would have done the interview differently in hindsight. She called Selleck a “kind man, who, for the rest of his life, has to be associated with me and that one event,” and admitted to being “pretty raw” on the show. “It was the first time I was in what I perceived to be a position of power – which I thought came with fame,” she said. “And I was really disillusioned to find out that it didn’t.”
