With the Supreme Court about to hand down two decisions that will affect the rights and lives of millions of LGBT Americans, Rosie O’Donnell chatted with Alec Baldwin on his podcast Here’s the Thing earlier this week about a different time for LGBT representation, AfterEllen pointed out. The out lesbian spoke of those dark days In 1997 before that watershed moment when Ellen DeGeneres came out of the closet in life and on her sitcom.
During the course of the podcast Alec and Rosie went through an exhaustive, if not fascinating, blow-by-blow of her career from her early days doing stand-up to her playing Madonna’s character’s best friend in A League of Their Own and so forth. Rosie spoke at length about being out in her personal life and how things have changed for LGBT people and celebrities.
Rosie spoke of Ellen’s courage in coming out at a time when even “absurdly gay-ish people” weren’t even out:
“…I remember like when Ellen called me up and said, 'I'm gonna have my character, Ellen Morgan, come out as a lesbian on my TV show.' And I remember thinking, 'Why the hell is she doing this? She's gonna ruin her entire career and her life.' It was such a foreign concept. This is pre-Will and Grace. No one had ever even considered it. The only people who were out were rock stars. There was no actor or actress or comedian who was out.”
Rosie continued to say that she felt awful for the negative wave that followed Ellen’s coming out. “I remember thinking she's (Ellen) making a huge mistake. And then there was that tremendous amount of fallout that happened afterwards,” Rosie told Alec. “I was like it pained me for her, it really did. Now in hindsight, oh my God, the courage that it took for her to do that at the time she did it in the way she did it was pretty unbelievable. I did not possess that.”
She went on to catalog the flood of queer representation that followed on television.
“So then Will and Grace comes on, not only does it work, it blows up. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, it's like the society, culture – we've changed in such a quick amount of time, that people don't even realize it,” Rosie said. “To think that in my lifetime, in my career, that you can be an out performer/actor playing against type – Neil Patrick Harris playing a womanizer on that show, being out and married with twin boys – and it doesn't hurt your career. It doesn't do anything. So in a way it's the most beautifully astounding, inspirational thing that I can think about in my 51 years of living.”
Read the full transcript of Rosie’s conversation with Alec.
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