"We had a little bit of a weird thing," Rosie said. "After my show went off the air and hers was coming on the air, Larry King was on with Ellen and he said, 'Whatever happened to Rosie O'Donnell? Her show went down the tubes. She came out as a lesbian and disappeared!' And Ellen said, and I'm quoting, 'I don't know Rosie. We're not friends.'"
Rosie recalled turning to her girlfriend at the time, Kelli Carpenter. "I was in bed with Kelli [Carpenter], and I said, 'Did I just hear that, or was that a hallucination, auditory voice in my [head]?'" O'Donnell said, shocked. "It hurt my feelings, like a baby, and I never really got over it."
Ellen DeGeneres wasn't the only celebrity Rosie O'Donnell slammed in the interview. Later she talked about Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who she fought with on The View in 2007 and ended up quitting over how things were handled. A caller asked her about recent comments she made after Elisabeth returned to The View as a guest, poking fun at First Lady Jill Biden's enthusiasm for Post-It notes.
"She came out with little Post-It notes," Rosie said. "She's like, 'Here's the Post-It notes I have for Joe Biden. You know, 'Joe, the gas is too high,' 'Joe, how's this workin' for ya?' 'Joe, hey, Joe.' And I was like [eugghh!] I wished I was there to, like, throw a sock at her or something."
Rosie also took to TikTok to share her thoughts after seeing her friend-turned-foe, calling it "strange" and saying, "I remembered why I don't want to watch it with her anymore." Rosie had an eight-month run on The View during the show's 2006-2007 season, replacing Meredith Vieira as the series moderator. She often clashed with Hasselbeck, who served as the show's conservative voice from 2003 to 2013. Rosie left the series in 2007 shortly after the pair's heated debate over the war in Iraq.
