Rosie O'Donnell says she had to 'argue and defend basic principles of humanity and kindness' on The View
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Rosie O'Donnell still has complicated feelings about her time on The View, particularly as it relates to conservative cohost Elisabeth Hasselbeck and what the comedian alleges was special treatment from former producer Bill Geddie.
Appearing on Tuesday's episode of the Now What? With Brooke Shields podcast, O'Donnell (who first co-hosted The View from 2006 through to 2007, the year she and Hasselbeck had a memorable blow-up live on air) said she first approached the show with a "teamwork attitude," but Hasselbeck and Geddie's partnership rubbed her the wrong way.
"Elisabeth Hasselbeck was on there and Bill Geddie was the producer of an all-woman talk show and supposedly a woman's voice was a man, an old, cis, white man Republican who was against everything that I believed in and stood for, and he loved Elisabeth Hasselbeck, and would go into her little dressing room and give her notes and talking points of the Republican press that they'd release daily. She had the talking points," O'Donnell told Shields. "I was trying to get her to feel more than to fact, I'm like, 'But what do you feel about this?' I tried. Here's what I did. When I took the job, I said to myself, I'm going to love her no matter what. I took her to her first Broadway show, I took her kids to see the Nickelodeon shows with me and my kids, I had her to my house."
O'Donnell said she thought the pair were close friends "in a civil kind of way," until they had a major clash on the May 23, 2007 episode.
"One day on the show she kind of threw me under the bus and I was like, 'Are you f---ing kidding me?' I finished the show, got my coat, walked out, and said I'm not going back, and I didn't, until a few years later when they asked me to come back and Whoopi [Goldberg] was on it and we clashed in ways that I was shocked by," O'Donnell noted, though she later returned to co-host the program once again from 2014 to 2015, following Geddie's departure that same year.
Lou Rocco/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images Rosie O'Donnell on 'The View'
"I had produced my own show. I was the solo boss, and here I was not having any power to make decisions. There would be the Rory Kennedy documentary about Abu Ghraib was out about the torture that we did as a country, how we sanctioned it. And Bill Geddie wanted to do the new fall lipstick colors. And I'm like, 'We're not going to talk?' And then, you know, Bill Cosby was a big topic and I wanted to discuss Bill Cosby [and the rape allegations against him] and Whoopi did not," she said about her eventual, short-lived return.
When Shields asked O'Donnell if she regretted going on The View, the actress said she didn't, but didn't mince words when she assessed her place on the program.
"I know this, it's not the best use of my talent to get in a show where I have to argue and defend basic principles of humanity and kindness. It was not something I'd ever do again," she continued before explaining that she maintained a healthy relationship with show creator, the late Barbara Walters, even after she departed the series. "Barbara and I got along after, we went out to dinner, we knew each other way before I did that show, before she asked me to do it, and we remained friendly toward the end. I forgave her, because she was older and did the best that she could with what she had to work with, but it's nothing I'd want to do again, I can say that."
EW has reached out to representatives for The View, Hasselbeck, and to Geddie directly for comment.
The View airs weekdays at 11 a.m. ET on ABC. Listen to O'Donnell discuss her time on the show on Shields' podcast above.
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