Rosie O’Donnell isn’t laughing.
The comedy icon in her latest “Watch What Happens Live” appearance told host Andy Cohen that she’s still holding onto feeling slighted by Ellen DeGeneres in the mid-1990s, after the latter shared on O’Donnell’s show that her “Ellen” character would be coming out as “Lebanese.”
“After my show was going off the air, and hers was coming on the air, Larry King was on with Ellen and he said, ‘Whatever happened to Rosie O’Donnell? Her show went down the tubes. She came out as a lesbian and disappeared.’ And Ellen said, and I’m quoting, ‘I don’t know, Rosie. We’re not friends,'” recalled O’Donnell, who couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“It hurt my feelings like a baby and I never really got over it,” she confessed.
DeGeneres, she said, did not allow her to bring someone along “to make it a little less awkward” when O’Donnell was asked to appear on the former’s talk show to promote her role on the Showtime series, “SMILF.”
“I wish her all good things in her life and that she should be well,” O’Donnell told Cohen. “But I never did it.”
DeGeneres faced criticism after allegations emerged of a toxic work environment on the set of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” which aired its final episode in May.
