Rosie O’Donnell believes her on-air 2007 argument with Elisabeth Hasselbeck was staged by producers.
Discussing the clash on ABC’s The View when O’Donnell first served as a cohost almost two decades ago, during an Australian radio interview, O’Donnell did not mince her words. “The whole thing, I think, was a set-up,” O’Donnell said on Nova’s Ricki-Lee, Tim & Joel program on Monday, October 6.
Referring to the argument’s visual production, which included a split-screen that showed O’Donnell and Hasselbeck, 48, arguing onscreen at once, O’Donnell noted, “Our producer [was] not an ‘on-the-fly kind of guy’… he wouldn’t have been like, ‘Let’s go to a split screen.’ That was prepared.”
The cohosts’ big bust-up saw their misaligned political opinions reach boiling point after multiple on-air disagreements throughout the daytime talk show’s 10th season.
Yelling at one another from across the panel as fellow hosts Sherri Shepherd and Joy Behar watched on, O’Donnell and Hasselbeck slung insults back and forth for around ten minutes. While revisiting the argument during her new interview, O’Donnell said she felt surprised at the time to stir such a response from Hasselbeck.
“What I was thinking the whole time was, ‘I cannot believe that this woman, after all I did for her,’ “ O’Donnell reflected. “When I took that job, I made one commitment to myself, that I was not going to be her enemy [and] that I was going to meet her as a person.”
O’Donnell claimed she took Hasselbeck under her wing when the pair began to get to know each other. “She came to my house. She swam in my pool, she brought her little kid. I took her kid to Sesame Street Live. I took her to her first Broadway opening,” O’Donnell said. “I bent over backwards for this woman, and here she was coming at me on national TV about whether or not I was patriotic.”
The Flintstones actress also revealed what went down after the cameras stopped rolling, including her decision to leave The View as a result. “When I went off the stage that day, I went to my dressing room to pack all my stuff up, go back and do the rest of the segments … and walked out and never went back,” O’Donnell said. “It felt to me like I was on a basketball team of five women, and one of them kept tripping me on my way to the hoop … this [was] supposed to be my team.”
O’Donnell’s wish to exit was confirmed via a statement released by ABC at the time which detailed that she had asked to be released from her contract with The View. The network and O’Donnell agreed to cut her agreement short on May 25, 2007. (O’Donnell did return to The View in 2024, but left the show after five months due to personal reasons.)
Of the network’s decision to cut O’Donnell’s contract short, she said on radio that it was a smart move. “They were right to have me leave that show,” she said. “It is not the best way for me to serve the talent and the people, because arguing about ridiculous, made up things is a way for a slow death.”
