Rosie O’Donnell may have officially come out in 2002, but if she’d had her way the reveal would have happened ten years earlier. This week, during a half-hour interview for web series Mondays with Marlo, Rosie told host Marlo Thomas that in 1992 an interviewer for Cosmopolitan magazine asked her if she was gay, and she responded, “Yes,” according to The Huffington Post.
The interview ran, but the coming out moment that would have made headlines didn’t make it in. Rosie doesn’t appeart to harbor any hard feelings about the omission, however. "I didn’t necessarily come out career-wise, but everyone in my life knew. Everybody in the world knew. Just, at the time, nobody printed it. [Editor-in-Chief] Helen Gurley Brown, I remember, took it out of an interview...She was protecting me because at that time it would've been a huge issue, right? So, I think it's changed a lot. I think it's much more common and people are much more used to it. It’s like being a part of a gay family was not nearly as troubling to my kids as being part of a famous family."
Today, Rosie O’Donnell remains one of the most prominent queer presences in the entertainment world, and has had guest starring roles on many LGBT-friendly shows, including Canadian drama Bomb Girls and, most recently, ABC Family’s The Fosters. Thanks, as always, for the inspiration, Rosie!
