Rosie O’Donnell Wrote a New Stand-Up Special Purely to Spite Ellen DeGeneres
While her Koosh ball-firing days may be behind her, Rosie O’Donnell seems to be quite busy lately. In addition to joining the cast of the Sex and the City spin-off And Just Like That…, she has reportedly written a new hour of stand-up material for a forthcoming comedy special. Why? To make Ellen DeGeneres look even worse than she already does.
According to In Touch Weekly, the same journalistic outlet that just cracked the case of Jessica Simpson’s weight loss, O’Donnell is “secretly finalizing a deal” for a new comedy special and is “vowing to outshine her longtime rival” Ellen DeGeneres. The outlet spoke with an anonymous insider who claims that O'Donnell's new hour will be “a lot like Ellen’s special, except it’s funny!”
They went on to say that “Rosie still has a swagger and still has real comedy chops, and thankfully, in her new material she doesn’t come across as bitter or defensive. She’s just trying to make people laugh, and she’s doing it by being herself.”
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Of course, not being “bitter or defensive” during a comedy show seems like a pretty low bar. Presumably, Rosie O’Donnell will also resist the urge to open her show with a self-pitying face-off with a CGI cyclone of mean tweets and bad press.
While we should probably take In Touch Weekly’s story with a grain of salt, Rosie and Ellen did have a very public falling out. “We’ve had our weirdness in our relationship,” O’Donnell told The Hollywood Reporter in 2023. “I don’t know if it’s jealousy, competition or the fact that she said a mean thing about me once that really hurt my feelings.”
The “mean thing” in question was an appearance on Larry King Live in which Ellen told the suspender-loving host: “I don’t know Rosie. We’re not friends.” Which came as a shock to O’Donnell, who knew DeGeneres socially, dating back to their stand-up days. They also had a memorable exchange on The Rosie O’Donnell Show, shortly before DeGeneres’ character came out on Ellen.
“It hurt my feelings like a baby, and I never really got over it,” O’Donnell said of the Larry King interview.
If this story is true, it would be Rosie O’Donnell’s first special in a decade; she released Rosie O'Donnell: A Heartfelt Stand Up in 2015.
In Touch Weekly’s source also notes that O’Donnell “doesn’t have a streaming deal for this material just yet,” adding that her “voice is needed in stand-up, and unlike Ellen, she’s going to get a warm welcome from fans. The bottom line is Rosie has more friends than Ellen does, and people are really rooting for Rosie as she finally gets back to her standup roots!”
At what point do we begin to suspect that this source is really Dakota Johnson?
