Rosie O’Donnell Finally Reveals the “Mean Thing” Ellen Said About Her That Ended Their Relationship

For a stretch in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Rosie O’Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres were two of the biggest names in comedy, rising up together as friends in the stand-up world and finding fame with their eponymous TV shows. But according to Rosie O’Donnell, their friendship became strained after DeGeneres made an appearance on a 1998 episode of Larry King Live in which she denied ever being friends with O’Donnell.

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, O’Donnell described her friendship with DeGeneres, saying, “I had known her for years doing stand-up and as young entertainers in Hollywood,” adding that in 1997, when DeGeneres was doing press to promote the famous coming-out episode of her sitcom, Ellen, O’Donnell had her on her own talk show, The Rosie O’Donnell Show, to support her.

“When she came on my show, I said, ‘Let me not have you standing there by yourself. Let’s get a joke in there.’ And we sat down and came up with that, ‘Oh my God, I love Casey Kasem. Maybe I’m Lebanese.’ It became a big thing,” she recalled. “Then the episode aired, Time ran its ‘Yep, I’m Gay’ cover and everybody was asking me, ‘What do you think about Ellen?’ It became a strange, ‘There can’t be two lesbians in this town,’ kind of a thing. Then we each had success and went separate ways.”

But the real rift began when DeGeneres appeared on Larry King Live. O’Donnell explained, “We’ve had our weirdness in our relationship. I don’t know if it’s jealousy, competition or the fact that she said a mean thing about me once that really hurt my feelings.”

O’Donnell continued, “She said it on Larry King Live. Larry King said, ‘Whatever happened to Rosie O’Donnell’s show? She went down the tubes as soon as she came out.’ And the quote that Ellen said was, ‘I don’t know Rosie. We’re not friends.’ I was watching TV in bed with my wife going, ‘Did she just say that?'”

O’Donnell said she was shocked that DeGeneres would say something like that, considering how long they had known each other: “It would never occur to me to say ‘I don’t know her’ about somebody whose babies I held when they were born. It wouldn’t be in my lexicon of choices to ever say.”

When the two women texted about the situation recently, O’Donnell said that DeGeneres couldn’t even remember what she said to King, which hurt even more.

“She wrote, ‘I’m really sorry and I don’t remember that,'” O’Donnell claimed. “I guess she saw me talk about it on Andy Cohen’s show. I remembered it so well… I knew her for so many years. It just felt like I don’t trust this person to be in my world.”