What To Know
- Rosie O’Donnell has confirmed she will return as a guest for The View‘s 30th season.
- O’Donnell reflected on past tensions with co-host Whoopi Goldberg and issues with the show’s management.
- She is also set to guest host Jimmy Kimmel Live! later this month.
After recently teasing that a return to daytime TV could be “interesting,” Rosie O’Donnell has now confirmed she will be returning to The View for its milestone 30th season.
O’Donnell, who co-hosted for two brief stints in 2006-2007 and 2014-2015, made the announcement on The Tangle podcast. The multi-time Daytime Emmy winner revealed she will appear as a guest on Season 30, which kicks off in late September.
“I will go on the 30th anniversary next [season], and be on in whatever way they want me,” O’Donnell said, noting she will return “just as a guest” rather than a co-host. She also noted that, “They’re bringing back all the hosts, I think, for the 30th season.”
Despite a contentious history with The View, O’Donnell said, “I’m pretty proud of that show, what it’s become and how it really speaks to the people and to politics,” adding that that was “not the case” when she first joined in 2006.
“Many, many people got the short end of the stick there. It was, you know, it was a factory where people were being churned in and out and their tenuous security, nobody got to be calm,” she explained. “It also was a show at the time that was run by a man. A show created by a woman, for women, about women, and the man was deciding what we should talk about. And that didn’t sit right with me, you know.”
O’Donnell first exited the show in 2007 after a tense on-air clash with former co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck. She returned in 2014 but again often found herself clashing with her co-hosts, particularly longtime host Whoopi Goldberg.
“I had a sort of tense time with Whoopi,” O’Donnell shared. “I wanted to be on her team. I admire her EGOT status. I have respect for her. And I thought we’d be like Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan, passing the ball back and forth, and shooting, and leading the team to victory. But that’s not exactly what happened.”
The A League of Their Own star said she thinks Goldberg might have felt “encroached upon” in some way. “And I was never trying to encroach, I was just doing it the way I knew how to do it, and it didn’t go so well.”
O’Donnell said that she has seen Goldberg since and “we’ve gotten past it… we’re grown ass women and, you know, she’s a woman who supports women, as am I.”
In the meantime, O’Donnell will be guest hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live! later this month, marking her first foray into hosting late night. Kimmel is currently on a two-month summer break from his talk show and has tapped celebs to fill in, including Tiffany Haddish, Ike Barinholtz, Colman Domingo, and more.
The View, Weekdays, 11a/10c, ABC