Rosie O’Donnell on Monday described the collapse of her friendship with Ellen DeGeneres as a “painful” betrayal, saying a public remark by DeGeneres on Larry King Live was the moment she realized their relationship had ended.
O’Donnell, 63, recounted the episode on Kate Langbroek’s "No Filter" podcast, revisiting events that began when DeGeneres’ character came out on an episode of the sitcom Ellen in 1997. O’Donnell said she felt compelled to publicly support DeGeneres at the time while she was still closeted herself and that the two had coordinated a lighthearted, coded exchange for DeGeneres’ appearance on The Rosie O’Donnell Show.
"I couldn’t do it. So we had this, you know, really sort of decoded, coded, interaction that anyone who was gay knew," O’Donnell said, adding that the moment felt threatening because she was hosting a popular daytime show and winning Emmys. She said she stood by DeGeneres then because she felt it was the right thing to do.
The friendship began to fracture, O’Donnell said, after an appearance by DeGeneres on Larry King Live following the end of The Rosie O’Donnell Show in 2002. O’Donnell said she and her then-wife, Kelli Carpenter, were watching when King asked DeGeneres about O’Donnell and whether her show had "gone down the tubes." According to O’Donnell, DeGeneres replied, "I don’t know Rosie. We’re not friends."
"That was like one of the most painful things that ever happened to me in show business in my life," O’Donnell said on the podcast. She described having photographs of DeGeneres holding O’Donnell’s newborn children and said she was stunned by the remark. O’Donnell added that she made T-shirts for her staff that read, "I don’t know Rosie. We’re not friends," to mark the incident.
When asked whether DeGeneres ever reached out to explain the comment, O’Donnell said, "No," and told Langbroek the two are not emotionally similar. O’Donnell also noted that after The Ellen DeGeneres Show debuted in 2003 she was not invited as a guest until many seasons later despite the new program sharing much of the production team from her own former show.
O’Donnell said she did not assign blame to DeGeneres for seizing a public moment but felt her friend could have handled the transition differently. "She was starting a show and wanted it to be successful and get the money and the accolades that came with it," O’Donnell said. "And instead of deciding to stand next to me and hold my hand, which is what I did to her, she did the opposite. I couldn’t believe it."
The Ellen DeGeneres Show ran for 19 seasons from 2003 to 2022. The program’s later years were marked by 2020 allegations of a toxic workplace, which DeGeneres addressed in an on-air apology at the start of the show’s 18th season. DeGeneres called herself "a work in progress" during that monologue and said she was "especially working on the impatience thing." DeGeneres finished a stand-up tour in 2024 and has since retired; she and her wife, Portia de Rossi, later relocated to the U.K., according to previous reports.
O’Donnell, who relocated to Ireland with her nonbinary child, said she has compassion for DeGeneres while also acknowledging reports about the former talk-show host’s workplace. "You can’t fake your essence," O’Donnell said previously when asked about the allegations.
The New York Post reached out to a representative for DeGeneres for comment.