Patricia Harty talks to the Princess of Daytime Talk: Rosie O’Donnell
They call her the Princess of Daytime talk shows. Our own Rosie O’Donnell who, at just 35 years old, seems to have the world at her feet.
In 1989 when I.A. first interviewed Rosie she was already a successful comedian and “vee-jay” on VH-1. Since then she has received an Emmy nomination for her HBO Comedy Hour special; made a major dent in the film industry and added Broadway to her repertoire. And now she has her very own nationally syndicated talk show, The Rosie O’Donnell Show.
It seems there is no end to the talent of this Irish American who grew up in Long Island, New York, the daughter of Ed, a native of Donegal, and the late Roseanna, and sister to Eddie, Danny, Maureen and Timmy. Her star has been on the rise since she was discovered as a 17-year-old by Ed McMahon’s daughter, a talent scout for television’s Star Search. Her brash New York style captivated audiences and quickly moved her up the comedic ladder.
A versatile all-round performer, O’Donnell made her motion picture debut four years ago in Penny Marshall’s smash comedy A League of Their Own, starring with Tom Hanks, Geena Davis and Madonna, and has gone on to star in Now and Then with Demi Moore; Sleepless in Seattle with Meg Ryan; Exit to Eden with Dan Aykroyd and Dana Delaney; Another Stakeout with Richard Dreyfuss (for which she received another American Comedy Award nomination) and Beautiful Girls with Uma Thurman.
Rosie’s favorite roles involve children. Her Betty Rubble in The Flintstones won her a Nickelodeon “Kid’s Choice Award” for Favorite Movie Actress, and this summer she stars in another made-for-kids movie, Harriet the Spy, where she plays a nanny to a precocious 11-year-old.
O’Donnell made her Broadway debut last year, starring as Rizzo in Tommy Tune’s revival of Grease, and now, as host and executive producer of the new nationally syndicated talk/variety series The Rosie O’Donnell Show, she has added another dimension to her considerable talents.
The show, now in its third month, is hugely successful in airing in New York at 10 a.m. and at 4 p.m. across the country. Rosie exudes confidence, flexibility, and on-the-ball smarts. In her introductory monologue she frequently departs from the script and ad libs with the audience, breaking into song at the drop of a hat (she seems to know the theme song to every television show popular during her childhood). Guests, who have
included Penny Marshall, George Clooney and Danny DeVito, are culled from her many friends in show business and television stars from `70s sitcoms, but Rosie also includes unknowns, such as a little girl from Illinois who wrote her a letter.
The change in careers came at a good time for Rosie. She adopted a baby, now 15 months old, and she wants to be a hands-on mother. For the first ten months of her son, Parker’s, life she didn’t have a nanny, but since starting the show she has someone who helps but doesn’t live in. rosie brings Parker to the studio with her every day.
Her own mother died of cancer when Rosie was ten years old, and her father, Ed, took the family of five children – all under the age of 13 – to Ireland, where they spent several months with relatives in Belfast and Dublin. rosie says that she was 21 before she could actually talk about her mother’s death.
Humor was a release from the pain, making people laugh became a way of life, and Rosie got great mileage out of her Irish American experience.
Rosie lives in New York City, and recently purchased Helen Hayes’ home in Nyack. She spoke to Patricia Harty about her childhood, her family, her baby, her new show and her hopes for the future.
How has the Rosie O’Donnell Show changed your life?
Well, I’m a lot more tired than I used to be. They are long days. I hope that eventually when we get to a real groove and we’ve been on the air a little bit longer, I’ll be able to leave by one o’clock in the afternoon so I’ll be able to relax, spend time with the baby…he’s here everyday with me, but when I have meetings and interviews and what not, I don’t really get to see him as much as I would like. That’s one thing – I didn’t expect to be as tired as I am, but I don’t want to complain, because it’s a pretty good gig.
Do you consider yourself lucky, or do your credit hard work for your success?
Well, both. You have to be lucky in show business as well as persistent, and you have to persevere through all the times when you have no job and people tell you you’re no good, or you’re not talented or funny or pretty enough – as everyone will – it’s a job where 99% of the actors in Actors Equity and SAG are unemployed. It’s definitely an uphill battle in Showbiz.
Did you have an early instinct that you wanted to do comedy?
I always knew, since I was like four. I wanted to be Barbra Streisand. I wanted to be in Broadway shows. I was the only fourth grader who knew all the words to South Pacific. I was just always fascinated by it, always wanted to do it and be in it. There was never a second choice for me – it was showbiz or nothing.
You’re so bubbly, always in a good mood on the show. What if you’ve had a bad night’s sleep or something?
What happened the day of the TWA crash, the horrible plane crash, coming out to do a little comedy felt so inane in a way. I came out and explained to the audience that it’s very difficult to do a show like this in light of such tragedy, so what I was going to try to do is do the show and at the end address the issue.
If there was some sort of tragedy in my personal life, I would probably do the same thing. I remember so vividly Johnny Carson – when his son died he did his show and at the end he said if you would mind a father’s indulgence – and he just showed the photographs his son had taken before he died, and I thought it was such a classy, non-manipulative way to deal with your own stress. If your job for an hour every day is to entertain and be up you sort of turn things off. After 17 years of standup comedy, you get good at it.
Wasn’t Johnny Carson the best?
Without a doubt. Hands down. He’s the one to emulate. He’s the one I try to strive to be like, although I’ll never be near as eloquent and dignified as he was. I absolutely loved watching him. There was a level of style and credibility that he brought to the game, a kindness. He understood that if there was egg on anyone’s face, it would be on his and not the guests. He knew that it was his job to assist and let them shoot and score. That’s what he did, and he did it brilliantly.
Do you feel that television has changed much?
Totally.
Would you be happy if your kid had the remote control?
No way.
What do you think has happened?
You hope the pendulum is swinging and it’s going to come back and land somewhere in the middle. Originally, Oprah and Donahue, in formative genres, presented alternative lifestyles and ideas in a respectful and dignified way, and demanded respect from the audience and of the panel, and that’s just no longer the case. It became exploitative, humiliation TV, and luckily, according to the numbers, people are sick of it. Hopefully, it will swing back. But there’s only so many times you can see “I slept with my brother’s wife.” I would never want my son to watch that. He watches Sesame Street in the morning and his Elmo video tape, and that’s pretty much it.
Do you see yourself doing his show for a number of years?
We have a five year deal with Warner Brothers and should we be lucky enough to go that long, I think afterwards we’ll reevaluate. I would not want to stay longer than is good for me or for anyone else. I don’t think I’d like to move to nighttime, I think my audience is much more daytime. Moms who are up at six in the morning aren’t staying up till midnight to watch Leno. I think that I really hit my audience in the afternoon and that’s where I’d like to stay.
And you’re also writing a book for Warner.
Actually, we’re going to put that off. I originally was slated to do that before the show started, and since it’s started, I’ve found the intrusion of certain media to be so overwhelming – they’re outside my father’s house with cameras, taking pictures of him going to the gym in his shorts.
I really have found it so intrusive that I felt to write a book and give details and facts would only provoke them more in a certain way, so I think that for now I’m going to hold off. I spoke with Warner about it, and it’s not in any way for a salary bump or to try to negotiate more, it’s just that I think right now it wouldn’t be the right time. I’m going to ride the wave and in a few years from now I think I’ll be more ready and willing to write stuff.
The effect this has had on my family, this certain amount of fame so quickly, has been really drastic and I have to respect their need and desire just for privacy and to live their lives. My father calls me twice a week to tell me somebody’s at his door again. “Honey, what should I do…” “Dad, you just don’t talk to them…” “I didn’t say anything and they said I said something last week…” “I know you didn’t say anything, Dad, just ignore it…” but it’s hard! He’s a retired man living with his wife, far away from here, and they’re outside his house Kind of creepy.
What about the tabloid talk of a rift between you?
My dad and I aren’t really in each other’s lives too much and I think the tabloids make more out of it than it is. You get to a point in your adult life where you need a certain amount of communication and intimacy and you’re no longer a child who has to put up with being treated in a way you don’t really want to. That’s the gist of it, and they can make it into this and that. I read some story that said that he’s upset, he’s never met his grandson… I speak to my father on the phone occasionally, it’s not like we’re estranged. He’s just, not right now, a functioning part of my life and that’s kind of a mutual decision by both parties and it seems to be working better. So I don’t keep saying “Well, you don’t do enough for me,” and he doesn’t keep saying, “Well, this is all I can do.”
Everybody has their own journey, and he grew up in that family that he grew up in, without any “I love you’s,” without any hugs, with alcohol problems. And I grew up in the family that I did, and I want a different family for my son. I want a lot of “I love you’s,” a lot of hugging. I want that safety and security that I felt I was missing as a kid. It’s not a condemnation of him, but I don’t think that he necessarily sees it in the same way as I do. And the bad thing is, if your wife dies, you’re the victim. So, unfortunately they [the press] go speak to people who live down the block who say. “He did good. He had five kids and his wife died.” Well, they didn’t live in the house.
He’s not a horrible man, my dad, he’s good guy trying to do the best that he can.
Was it that you just couldn’t communicate?
No…there were problems. There are problems in every family. The bad thing when you get famous is that you don’t want to play them out in the press, and everybody is trying to work through them as most families do. If you ask your average Irish-American 35-year-old woman whose mother died in ’73 how’s it going with her five siblings and her father, I don’t know that it would be peachy keen there either.
The problem is, to have to relive them [family problems] or rehash them in the press doesn’t do anyone any good because then things are misquoted and people get angry and feel violated and say, “How could you say that?” “But I didn’t mean it like that.” It’s ridiculous. You never win.
On one show, when you talked about watching the ’72 Olympics with your mother, you seemed a little choked up.
Well, I had Linda Dano on and she said to me that she’d seen me in Grease on opening night. Opening night I did get all choked up and was sort of crying when we all took our bow and I had to give a little speech and said we thank all of our parents who are here and who aren’t, I kind of broke down, and she saw that. So she brought it up during the show, which I didn’t know she was going to do. Then it started getting me back to the emotion of that moment. I do remember watching the Olympics with my mom, but those kind of stories, when I’m the one telling them, I sort of have myself protected or guarded in some capacity. But when someone surprises me with one, like that woman – or one day, during a commercial, some woman in the audience raises her hand and says, “I’m your mother’s first cousin and I have some pictures of her here,” it was like – what? It was some woman I hadn’t seen since 1970. When I’m surprised or caught off guard, it is, needless to say, emotional and unnerving, but usually I have that little guard up.
Was your mother from Ireland too?
No, my father moved here when he was very young – his brogue isn’t as thick as yours, I make that up for my act – but my mom was 100% Irish as well.
Have you ever been back to Ireland? I know you went over there after your mother died when your father took you over.
No, I haven’t…
Did that trip ruin it for you?
No, I would love to go there, in fact when I think of where to go on vacation when I have two weeks off, that’s one of my top choices. I’ve been back to London since for work, but never to Ireland. I’d love when we have a month off next summer to go there, rent a house and be in the green countryside without a TV and read books. That would really be my idea of a paradise kind of vacation.
It’s a great place for kids.
Exactly, and the baby will be running around by then.
Do you have any memories from your trip as a child?
I remember eating salt and vinegar potato chips and having sweets, the candy, those Marathon bars, remember those? We used to go to the woods and my cousin would shoot cap guns and we’d hide in the bushes and watch the helicopters come because we were in Belfast for part of it. It’s all sort of a fuzzy, hazy memory, but I do remember playing soccer all the time, which we never did in the U.S., and picking up the brogue right away and speaking that way the whole time we were there and all my siblings making fun of me.
Is it true that you learned to play the bagpipes?
I did take bagpipe lessons when I was probably 14. My uncle, Jim O’Donnell, was a piper and I used to take lessons from him and at some church when I was 15 and 16, and I can play a little bit, but not well.
I saw somewhere your baby, Parker, referred to as P.J.
When my brother Timmy was little, we called him T.J., and in fact all the males in my family have the middle initial J. My dad’s Edward J., my brother’s Eddie J., Danny J and Timmy J. and so Parker J.
That’s a kind of Irish thing.
Yeah, but right now I call him Boo mostly, “Here, Boo Boo.” So we’ll see when he gets bigger, but I know that one of the magazines wrote that. Nobody really calls him that, though, but with me it’s a possibility.
Are you close to your siblings?
We’re all very close. My sister maureen just had her third baby, she lives in New Jersey, my brother Tim just had his second baby, he lives in Florida, my brother Eddie has one baby and he lives here in New York City, and my brother Danny’s a lawyer and he lives in the city as well. My sister was my business manager until she had her third child last month. Her husband has taken over in that capacity.
It was pretty unselfish of you to adopt a baby.
I think I’m very lucky. The greatest thing that can ever happen and the most generous act any woman can do is to give a baby up for adoption – to know that you don’t have the emotional or sometimes financial resources to care for a baby in the way that they deserve to be cared for. So I have tremendous respect and admiration for the women who do that, which I think is the ultimate act of selflessness.
You seem to have special relationship with kids. You like to make them feel good.
I really remember what it was like to be a little kid, maybe because my mom died when I was that you and I suppose if you asked therapist – which I know the Irish are generally not big fans of – they would tell you that you emotional growth was stunted then or whatever. I can understand what it meant to me when I was a child and I saw Lucy Arnez in the Stage Door [restaurant] when I was 14 or 15, so when there’s nine-year-old in the audience I know it really profoundly changes them if you take a moment and say, “what’s your name,” and shake their hand. I would tell Lucy Arnez when I was a kid “you know I’m going to be a famous Broadway star too” and she said,” well, good for you, you do it,” [Rosie corresponded with Lucy], and it really meant so much to me.
The Irish Voice had as their lead story this week: “Why Are We Afraid – The Irish and Therapy.”
Yeah, it’s not really a very popular idea culturally, but I think it’s quite needed. It’s 1996, it’s time for all of us to say perhaps there are dark stories in our past the we all need to benefit from talking about.
There are problems that are innate in the Irish community. People will joke about them. One of the ways that they’re solved is through about them. This is the truth about what I lived, about your grandfather, about his father, and here’s what we hope for our children. That’s all that I’m looking for for my boy.
How important is being an Irish Catholic to you?
I think that my Irish heritage is ingrained in me in ways that I don’t even fully comprehend yet, but I know that it comes out. As far as my Catholic although, I’m not a practicing Catholic at the moment, I know that when I drive past an accident, before I realize that I’m doing, I cross myself, so there are things that are ingrained in you that come up from your childhood, the foundation of how you were raised. It definitely had a profound impact on me.
Do you think this is why you’re a Democrat?
Oh yeah – I think we’re a long tradition of Irish Democrats, the Kennedy legacy was always a very pride-filled think in our family. My family have always been Democrats and always supportive of the policies that are innate in the Democratic party as opposed to the Republican.
What do you think of the new welfare bill?
I think it’s horrible. Really really horrible, and I think it lacks compassion, it’s ill-conceived, and I’m not a politician. Speaking as a human and a mom it is really doing a disservice to America’s children, especially America’s poor children, and there are many.
Let’s hope that come November Clinton stays in office and that hopefully we can work and lobby to get it repealed, because in five years when women who have children are taken off welfare, I wonder how they’ll make the money to support their kids. And women will do whatever it takes to feed their kids, and that’s going to be to the detriment of us all.
Do you think teachers are underpaid?
Without a doubt. It’s the same issue with day care. In the U.S. we have these people watching our children, teaching our children, for ten hours a day, and they’re going no money, so we’re getting the low end of the barrel instead of the cream of the crop, and I think that’s something I would love to effect change in.
I went to see comedians Kevin Meany and Greg Fitzsimmons the other night..
I love Kevin Meany. He’s one of the few comedians who actually makes me crack up laughing.
Greg said that Hollywood considers there to be two types of humor – Irish and Jewish…he said the Irish is sarcastic and the Jewish is neurotic…
I think that true. In our house the way that we were encouraged to show our feeling was through comedy. You couldn’t really say that you were upset about something specifically and have to deal with the tears and the emotion, but you sure could make a joke about it. If we were upset that we didn’t have a blow dryer so we used the Electrolux to blow-dry our hair, we couldn’t really say, “You know, Dad, it makes me feel bad that we don’t have a blow dryer,” but we could make a joke out of it. If you could relate your feelings through comedy, it was tolerated, and so that’s how I learned to express myself.
Do you miss doing stand-up?
Yes, I do, actually. I still do it occasionally.
What about movies? What kind of characters do you like to play?
Well, I don’t think I’m going to be doing movies for a while. I really loved this last movie I did, Harriet the Spy, with the kid focus. I really have an interest in trying to affect children’s lives in a positive way, so I wouldn’t be at all disappointed if I became the Dean Jones for kids today, who’s in all those kid movies. I get tremendous joy out of hearing kids say, “Oh that’s Betty Rubble,” even more so than an adult saying, “I loved the nuances of your performance in Sleepless in Seattle.” For me it really matters more to touch a kid’s life. I would love to do kids’ films.
Are you thinking about adopting more kids?
I’d love to. Anyway children come into my life. Through natural means, adoption or foster care…I think it’s gift and I’m open to whichever way it happens.
Have you given up on the idea of marriage?
No, I never given up on it. I think you should never give up. No matter what your quest is.
So, you bought Helen Hayes’ house in Nyack, New York.
Yes, I did. She was a great lady. I was a huge fan of hers, and had tremendous respect for her. When I heard her house was for sale, I thought, “Boy, if there’s any way that I could make this work, I would love to do it.” We’re restoring it to the way it was when she was in it. When it’s finally done next year, I think it will be beautiful.
Would you trade all your success for a more normal childhood?
It’s so hard to say. I would trade it all to have my Mom still alive, without a doubt, but you don’t get to make those bargains. Everything that happens combines to make you who you are today. In some ways, I think I probably would, and yet I surely wouldn’t be me if that were true.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the September/October 1996 issue of Irish America. ⬥
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