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From left: Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O'Donnell, who h\ve famously been in a feud since 2004.
From friends to feuding, the lesbian comics' beef goes way back.
Rosie O’Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres are both lesbian comedians with successful acting careers. They've both had major daytime talk shows, and both fled to Europe because of the current political climate, and yet despite how much they have in common, they’ve been feuding for more than two decades.
In a new interview with Us Weekly, O’Donnell is speaking out about the deterioration of her relationship with DeGeneres and what led to the falling out between the former friends who have such a long and shared history.
Although there have been years' worth of simmering animosity, O’Donnell said she doesn’t have any “malice” toward her old friend. “I don’t want to fight against another gay woman. It’s not like we’re tenaciously opposed to each other. We’re just very different people. We have had some stuff in the past that we never resolved,” she explained.
But how did the feud start, and where do the women stand now?
The two women both came up in the stand-up comedy scene at the same time in the '90s so they ran into each other frequently and according to O’Donnell they used to go to parties together with other lesbian celebrities.
“I had known her for years doing stand-up and as young entertainers in Hollywood. Me, Melissa [Etheridge], k.d. [lang] and Ellen, we all would go to parties together,” O’Donnell told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview back in 2023.
The League of Their Own actress explained that they were such good friends that right before DeGeneres came out on her sitcom Ellen and then on the cover of Time, she came on The Rosie O’Donnell Show and teased coming out. To support her friend, despite still being in the closet herself, O’Donnell made a lesbian joke on air.
“It was a good relationship. We were friends,” O’Donnell said. “We supported each other. Which is why when she came on my show, I said, ‘Let me not have you standing there by yourself. Let’s get a joke in there.' And we sat down and came up with that, 'Oh my God, I love Casey Kasem. Maybe I’m Lebanese.’ It became a big thing.”
The relationship between the comedians deteriorated when DeGeneres appeared on Larry King Live in 2004 and acted like she and O’Donnell weren’t friends.
“She said it on Larry King Live. Larry King said, ‘Whatever happened to Rosie O’Donnell’s show? She went down the tubes as soon as she came out.’ And the quote that Ellen said was, ‘I don’t know Rosie. We’re not friends.’ I was watching TV in bed with my wife going, ‘Did she just say that?’”
The reality of what DeGeneres told Larry King is slightly different: "I don't really know Rosie that well. I mean, I've spoken to her, but we're not really friends," she said.
On an episode of Watch What Happens Live in 2022, O’Donnell admitted that she was hurt by DeGeneres snubbing her on Larry King Live. "It hurt my feelings like a baby and I never really got over it," she told host Andy Cohen after relaying the whole saga.
O’Donnell also claimed in the interview with THR that DeGeneres hired the staff from her talk show to work on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, which started in 2003, shortly after O’Donnell left her own talk show.
“She used the same staff from my show — Jim Paratore, Andy Lassner. So that was odd. It was very similar to my show,” O’Donnell told the publication. "And then I asked to go on because of something I was promoting, and she said no. And I remember going, “Seriously?” After she said no that one time, whenever they would ask [me to appear] on the show, I would say no."
O’Donnell told THR back in 2023 that after she appeared on Watch What Happens Live, she received a text from her old friend apologizing and admitting that she didn’t remember saying that to Larry King.
But at the time it doesn’t sound like O’Donnell was ready to live and let live. “She wrote, ‘I’m really sorry and I don’t remember that.’ I guess she saw me talk about it on Andy Cohen’s show. I remembered it so well, I had T-shirts printed and I gave them to my staff that said ‘I don’t know Rosie. We’re not friends.’”
O’Donnell said that at one point the two women were so close that they knew each other’s family, but after the feud started, she no longer trusted DeGeneres. “I have a picture of her holding [my then-infant son] Parker. I know her mother. I could identify her brother without her in the room. I knew her for so many years. It just felt like I don’t trust this person to be in my world,” she said.
While DeGeneres hasn’t spoke publicly about the feud, O’Donnell went into detail about her feelings toward DeGeneres in the new Us Weekly interview.
“I don’t want to fight against another gay woman. It’s not like we’re tenaciously opposed to each other. We’re just very different people,” she admitted. “We have had some stuff in the past that we never resolved. And not in any way as, as partners or lovers or anything like that, just as friends and comedians, but I wish her the best. I seriously do,” she told Us. “I think that there’s enough room in the world for all of the gay comedians, and we all need to stick together because gay people are the next group to be threatened. And the way they attack trans people is absolutely terrifying. If people don’t understand that they’re a vital part of the LBGTQIA+ community, that’s tragic because we protect our own, especially the most vulnerable.”
Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
