Rosie O’Donnell says he had nine figures in her bank account when her hit self-named talk show wrapped its run — and she rejected an offer to double those savings.
The comedian told Page Six in a recent interview that she decided to end The Rosie O’Donnell Show after discovering she had accrued $100 million.
“When I heard that [number], I thought, ‘OK, now I’m done,” she said. “And everyone was like, ‘Why are you leaving?’”
The reason, she explained, is that she “had enough money to take care of everyone in [her] life, philanthropy, and strangers,” and she wanted to be present in her children’s lives.
“I wanted to be at their softball games,” she said, “I wanted to be at school plays.”
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And to the shock of Warner Bros. executives, she declined the studio’s offer of another $100 million for another two years of the talk show,
“They were like, ‘Why would you say no?’” she recalled. “and I was like, ‘Because I already have that money and if I think I need more, something’s wrong with me.’ … I don’t get the billionaires. I don’t get how people only measure their life in money, not what they can do for other people.”
The Rosie O’Donnell Show ran six seasons between 1996 and 2002. The syndicated series won five consecutive Daytime Emmys for Outstanding Talk Show, and O’Donnell won four consecutive Daytime Emmys for Outstanding Talk Show Host.
Since then, O’Donnell has served as a panelist on The View, hosted a nightly OWN talk show titled The Rosie Show, and acted in the TV series American Gigolo and The L Word: Generation Q. Having decamped to Ireland recently, O’Donnell is back in the United States and back in the headlines with an upcoming guest-hosting stint on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and an Off-Broadway one-woman show titled Rosie O’Donnell: Common Knowledge .