Rosie O'Donnell

Published Mar 3, 2014, 5:00 AM

Rosie’s childhood dream of performing on Broadway alongside Bette Midler never materialized. Instead, at 16 she delivered her first stand-up routine to an appreciative Long Island crowd. She tells Alec that she stole most of her jokes that night.

A decade later, the comedian broke into television as an unbeatable Star Search contestant. A multi-talented actress, author, activist and television personality, “The Queen of Nice,” has embraced motherhood, adopting five children. Whether advocating the rights of gay parents or speaking out on political issues, Rosie O’Donnell has never been afraid to speak her mind.

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This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing, My chance to talk with artists, policymakers, and performers, to hear their stories. What inspired their creations, what decisions change their careers, what relationships influence their work. I never had a fallback on purpose, and my dad used to say that all the time, you need a fallback, but I knew that this career was so difficult to succeed in that if you had a fallback, you would fall back. So I didn't have one. It's so great to be back here in Boston, where I went to college, where I started the one stand up comedy. Rosie O'Donnell has been a stand up comic, an actress, a star search contestant, a talk show host, an activist, a philanthropist, a magazine editor, a Broadway and television producer, and a mom. Rosie has five kids. You have to manage your time and make each one of them feel spe doing it all was a pattern Rosie established early in high school. She was voted homecoming queen, prom queen, senior class president, and class clown. Rosie o'donald has never shied away from a controversial subject. Her combination of confidence and conviction has led to very public disagreements with celebrities such as Tom Selleck, Donald Trump, and Elizabeth Hasselbeck. From the view, you just said our enemies in Iraq? Did Iraq attack us? No, I'm saying al kada? Okay, did Iraq attack us? Elizabeth, Iraq did not attack us. We've been there before. I'm saying our enemies al Qaeda? Are you hearing that? But that same combination led to her hugely successful talk show, The Rosie o'donald Show, in which she talked with celebrities and non celebrities alike. Rosie talked about what mattered to them and to her. She earned herself the nickname the Queen of Nice. Where are you from? A Toronto? And he came down here just for the show, just for the show. My husband drove on me and my friends ten hours. So I'm very afraid to fly. He didn't have tickets because where I don't know. He's wandering outside thirty robbers, probably watching the show, freaking out that I'm here because I said I would be here. If he's still in Toronto, you don't know he's here? Is in New York? Where in New York at a her hotel. Again, what I'll tell you the Belvedere right on fifty second eight. Hey, what's his name? Eddie? Eddie, get you butt down, Rosie o'donald is nice. I'm grateful from what she has. She might say that has something to do with her childhood when she suffered the hardest blow imaginable. You know, my mother died. There were two younger siblings and two older siblings. That's right, So that was really hard everything, yes, and and it's sort of close to her, not really. I mean I think that she was very irish and reserved like my father. There was no I love us in the house. There was no hugging, you know. It was more like like I went to Jackie South all the time. My best friend still lived across the street when I was a kid, and her mother would say I love you to them, and I remember being struck like cold from that, like you would say that to each other, Like no one said that to each other and my family ever until we were really older adults, and even then it was difficult. So I remember when I had my first child, when Parker, who was now eighteen, the I love yous were frequent and fluid. And you know, even now, I dropped my boy off at school this morning and he's thirteen. You know, I'm like, by Blake, I love He's like love you to mom, like casual nothing, don't even And that was so foreign to me as a child, and I craved it. I craved it. And when a mother dies in a family like that, things turned to disarray because the washing machine, the you know, things that my dad just had no clue about, Like he mashed the potatoes in the water. He was trying to make mashed potatoes. After she ducked, It's like all of the domesticity went out of the house and it was so kind of stark and cold and and run down. And you know, the things that a mother's touch generally bring to your life, we're missing. And that's all the all the softness and the and the kind of safety and security to prepare the family for a life without her. Rosie's mother taught each of her five children a different meal to cook. Rosie learned how to make London broil, which she says she still won't eat because of the memories it conjures. Up in her hometown of Komack, Long Island, not far from where I grew up. Rosie began to plot out her future and a life in show business. You know, I never wanted to be a talk show host. That was never my goal. I wanted to be on Broadway. So, you know, I wanted to be a Bette Midler backup singer, one of the Harletts. So when I was, you know, in in Comac High School South and nine, and I would take the train in and see a matinee every Wednesday and cut out of school and do standing room. And so my goal was Broadway. And I saw a bet on Broadway and Clams and a Half Shell one of my first shows ever. That was my goal. It was in streisand it was never to be. You know, I didn't grow up listening to Johnny Carson like every comic tells you. I, you know, admired to be like my mother. You don't want to, No, I never thought of it. My mother didn't like Joan Rivers. My mother thought she was mean. And I remember my mother telling me Tody Fields was a real comedian, Phillis Diller was a real comedian, but that Joan Rivers is not nice. And she said, you never go for in exactly and Joan was made fun of Elizabeth Taylor, which I think to my mother was sacrasych you know, so I never like thought of it. So when I was in high school, I would do the play for the seniors, right, everybody makes fun of the teachers and like a Saturday and night life type thing the senior year, and I was a freshman and they knew that I was sort of into comedy, and they said, would you write the skits? So I did so I was the only sort of freshman allowed to be and for every year sophomore junior, I was writing these skits. So the last years, my senior year, this guy comes in and and says, hey, did you write all this stuff? And I said yeah. He goes wanting to be a stand up. I'm like, God, I don't know how to do stand up because, well, I own a club, east Side comedy club in Huntington's near you. Why don't you come and do stand up? What year is that? That is nineteen seventy eight? What is a stand up comedy club like in Huntington's night Well, I was sixteen years old. I just got my license, but I wasn't really old enough to get into clubs. So I took my neighbor Dory Norton's license. Remember when they were paper and you could take a little pin and scrape. So I had fake ID to get A whole career is built on a crime, actually without a death. I was impersonating um. So I went in and you know, when you're sixteen years old, you're fearless, right. Also, everybody I knew from my high school showed up that night because it was a Saturday night or something, and he let me go on and do a few minutes, and I killed because everybody I knew was in the room, right, So I'd make jokes like Maryland's going out with Mitchell and Mike doesn't know, and all my friends would be like I made fun of the teachers, like common things that. So the owner said, well, that was really good, why don't you come back tomorrow? So I went back the next night. I didn't know anyone. It was a school night. I bombed like you have never oh my god, like a horrible death. And I went home and I thought, I don't want to do that anymore. So I'm watching um merv. Griffin and I see Jerry Seinfeld and I see him doing is that. It's all going like last and I remembered is that, you know there were no VCRs then, but I remembered, like you know, my car stopped and I opened up the hut and I'm thinking what am I looking for? And on off, switch, on off, and I'm thinking hi, And so I remembered it right. The club owner called me again, Richie and said, come back. Why don't you come back? You were good that first night. And so I come back and I do Signfelds act almost verbade him, and I get off stage and Ritchie and you know, a bunch of other comics are standing around, said, wod you get that material? I said, this guy named Jerry who was on MERV Griffin yesterday. They go, You're not allowed to do that. I'm like, why not? They you have to write your own jokes and like, wait a minute, Strician doesn't write her own song. Did you do well? Did the audience like? And they didn't you hear those? Because they were laughing jokes a joke. I have to write the jokes and nuts. Harold Arlen wrote that song that stuff, and so you know that. Then I they say, well, why don't you just hang around here and uh, you can watch. So I started watching, right, I started going there almost every night watching comics. The crowd like, well, back then he was sort of the Heyday was starting with the Heyday, like Eddie Murphy had just gotten on Saturday Night Live. So somebody from our little club broke out to the big time. And comedy clubs were kind of hot in the eighties, you know, I sort of yeah, I hate the wave at the exactly the right time. One Michael said that to me once. He said that when Saturday Night Live started back then in the mid seventies. He said, they were like six comedy clubs in the United States exactly, and you knew every stand up working. There was a time when I started where I knew every female comics working working in the country, right, And everybody knew each other, and everybody would help each other out. Hey, there's a club Tickles and War in Ohio. I can talk to the guy for you. You wouldn't have to audition because you knew somebody who went there. And a lot of times I'd go to the clubs and they pick you up in the car at the airport and they'd have a sign and they'd be driving you back to the comedy condo and the guy go, you know, you know the fourth girl I had, the last three sucked if you went good him the nether book and a girl again. I was like, no pressure, you know, just my entire gender is writing on this. So um, you know. The kite comic called me and said come back, and then I did. I was hanging out there and then I would do open Mic Night. So Shirley Hempill, do you remember what's happening? Big heavy Black Lady should play? Okay, she was the headliner. Now that was a big deal in nineteen eighty. Right, she's the headliner and she's they are a day early watching open Mic Night. I come off the stage. She comes over to me. She goes, little one, little one, come here. I said, yeah, Now, I'm an eighteen year old kid, alec, but I look about fourteen, right, and she says, um, you're funny. Come with me. She takes me in through the kitchen to Richie's office and says I want her to open for me this weekend and he goes, no way, she's too new, she doesn't have any act. She says, I wanted to m C. I wanted to open and do every show, and I want you to pay her twenty five bucks a night. There was a hundred dollars. I was eighteen and in high school. I thought my head was gonna exactly, my head was gonna explode. And so she really helped my career. I started doing on and then I never stopped. And you did that until Star Search was two, when you were on right now, obviously this idea of the Talent Search show, this goes back to Leonard Sillman on Broadway years. I mean, this has been forever. And then then of course there's a renaissance of this now with the voice and this in the hand and the foot and the tongue and every of the show. What was that like back then for you? Well, it was unbelievable because unlike huge and unlike today where there are so many media platforms and there are so many shows like it, we had four channels, five maybe, and I remember my nana whenever somebody was on, like Tody Fields was on MERV Griffin or the Don Ho Show which was on twelve and the f I'd have my nana press play and record on the cassette player, so I could listen to Tody Fields on the shows that I would miss at school. And I think back about that now and it's kind of trippy. The TV was the fireplace. Oh my god, totally. So what happened was Star Search was so popular and I was on the second season. Comics had two minutes a hundred and twenty seconds to do materials. You have a clean routine, Always have a clean routine. Oh no, not in clubs necessarily. But I hadn't, you know, enough stuff. The problem was I kept winning, So I had enough clean material for like five weeks, and then I kept winning. So I called up comics who are my friends, and said, can I use that bit? About this? Can I use that? And they a lot of them said yes, you know, Jeanette Barber, let me use a lot of bits, Carol Henry, let me use bits. And you know, I had people trying to help me. And so then I lost, and I eventually, but I won like god like. It was like twelve thousand dollars or like fourteen thousand dollars, and I remember thinking I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. I went for the final a hundred thousand dollar thing, and I lost, and I remember never being so nervous in my life. You know, TV was so different back then. In they put you up at the Sunset Strip, right, it was at Sunset and Vine where they filmed it. And I didn't have any money, right, they'd give you per diem, but I didn't know to get per diem. So I had all that I had in my talk. It was like, you know, forty dollars. So I'd walk every day to Carney's. You know that hot dogs cheer on Sunset and for a dollar forty you could get fries, a small coat, and a hot dog. And that's all I had. That's welcome her back. Here's Rosie oh Donald. So it's so funny. You watch it. You watch me losing weight every single week because I didn't. I didn't really, you know, But I ended up winning all this money and I went from being an opening act to being a headliner from Star Start Overnight. But it really did help my career doing Star Starch. After I did the show, I was up for partner movie. I said, you can have the part. Can you drop the New York accent? I said sure, But the only way I can drop the New York accent is if I opened my eyes really wide and actually think about everything I'm saying. The only problem is I can't act this way. The only thing I could be is a contestant in the Miss America paget and then you get into the movie business. Then I become a VJ. I do star Search, and then I do give me a break. What happened was I was at a comedy club and Lauren Michaels was there, was Share and Brandon Tarnikoff, and it's called Bigby's Comedy Clubs okay, and Dana Carvey was was auditioning to get on SNL and I was the next comic up and the waitress is one of my friends. And they said, we're not dropping the check until after your set. So well, Brandon, and they wanted the check because they had seen Dana I was on and I killed right now. It's I had a decade under my belt of doing stand up right, so um. They came up to me after the show, Brandon Tarnikoff, and said, Hi, I want you to call this number at NBC tomorrow. We have a job for you. And I called My sister was like three in the morning New York time, I said, I got on SNL. Oh, my god, Brandon Tarnikoff was here with Lauren Michael's and I'm gonna be on SNL. And I walk in the next day to NBC and they said, we're gonna put you on Give Me a Break, and I was like, now, I was still thrilled to be on TV, and so that was the show. I did about ten episodes of that in the last season with a very unhappy nel Carter, which was a very shocking thing to me because I had this image that everybody on TV was friendly and happy and it was utopia, and I had seen her in Broadway and Bubbling Ground and Bubbling Brown Shot as well up Town. But that was my first thing I did Give Me a Break. After that, that was eighty six, and then eighty eight. They were auditioning VJs for v H one and at the improv with Budd Freedman, and I went there and I did my set and the guy came out and he said, you're really good, but you don't really look like MTV, and I said, I know when he goes, but we have another station, v H one, And at that time it was reda Coolidge, I don't know if you remember. And so he said, you wanted an audition for that, you'd have to fly yourself to New York. I said, all right, So I flew my wedding nine times a day, exactly right. And they said, you know you can audition. So I went on camera and I auditioned and went home to l A. And then I wrote him a thank you note, Steve Leeds, I said, thanks for the shot. I really appreciate it. And he was so moved that somebody wrote him a thank you note that he sent the tape over to the v A one people. The guy who was hiring is named Ed Harrington, very Irish guy. He saw Rosie O'Donnell and they hired me. So it was a thank you note that got me told I did that for about two years that it was because it seems like for the person who wanted to the clams on the hashell career, you meander and you here and here where it takes you. What was it like for you to be doing that? Well? Everyone everyone said not to do it. People who were quote unquote advising my career, like Bud Freeman or you know, I didn't even have an agent. Really that because I knew it was in twenty three million homes, and I thought that it would teach me how to be conversational versus presentational. Presentational is what you do with stand up. You've already prepared it. It's a wrapped package. They undo the bow, they undo the thing, Bloom, there's the joke, right, But this is more conversational. Can you carry on a conversation with a camera and treat it like a person? And I thought it was a skill that would really help me. And I also thought that many millions of people seeing you, you can't say no if you've never seen Elton John and concert, I am urging you to do with both at in a lot and I love it. I'm going to see him Thursday night and my sisters going to see him tonight. Was it also about money? It was a hundred thousand dollars because I don't want to assume, but are you like me where a lot of the decisions I made was about money? Yeah, at that time, I was like, you know, twenty one maybe and to get a hundred grand because I remember saying to them, I'm giving up a lot of money to not go on the road because I was making good money in the road and you would have to definitely cover that, and so they came up with a hundred grand. So what I would do is it was eight hours a day, but you could film that in about two hours. It was four breaks an hour at two minutes a break. So they would give you the pictures that you had to do, like, you know, this is Rosie O'donnald coming at you on v H one Video Hits one. The other music television that was Whitney Houston, her seven single offer debut album, Whitney Houston is doing VH one to Go Go our dance show only here on v H one Saturday nights eight to eleven. You do have a good memory, but that was about fourteen seconds. Now I had a minute and a half left to fill and there's nobody but me and two cameramen. So my goal was to get the cameraman to laugh so that the camera would jiggle, right, So that was that was my goal. I want to go back and see tape to see if I can find that jiggling camera. I bet you can't. I bet I can't. Yeah, And so I did that for about two years and that's how Penny Marshall saw me. She saw you on v H one. I had just gotten an agent and I sit next to this woman on a plane and coach and she's very bitchy to the stewardess and she's saying, I ordered a salad, and I start making her laugh. I'm like, here, take my salad, give me a dessert. You're such a and I put her her luggage and I was just making her laugh, right, And so it turns out she's an agent. She's a new agent at William Moore. She's Julie Roberts, agent's assistant. Okay, so I'm like, wow, that's pretty big for me. So I start talking to her and she's like, what are you doing. I'm like, I'm going out to audition for a game show. And she's like, oh and good luck. So I don't see her, you know, I dropped her a no to something. And then six months later I sit next to her again on another plane. Is that the weirdest story? And I she said, what are you doing? I said, I got offered wind Lose a drawer for kids on Disney. They're gonna pay me fifty thousand dollars. A year, five year contract and I'm gonna host that show, and she said, you're not. And I'm now your agent, and we're too close to God for me not to intervene. And it's too weird to sit next to you twice. What's her name, Reesa Shapiro, of course? And does she remain your agent for how long? She did? For probably twenty years and then um, she sort of what happened to you know, William Morris? And they all integrated, right, and they fired all the women. People say to me, why are you so bitter sometimes about Hollywood? I said, it's just because it's just it's so foreign to me. I said, these are the guys who they could come into my house Millon and rape my mother and torture my mother, and then six weeks later to call you and they'll go, listen, I know I raped your mother and I tortured your mother. But I've got a script. It's a great part for you. I mean, come on, well, you know, I have a really interesting thing that reminds me of I did a movie for Hallmark called Riding the Bus with my sister, and Angelica Houston directed it, and she's an amazing director. And I love her as a person. It was done, and she handed in her cut and apparently Hallmark didn't like it, so they recut it and they sent it to me and they said, if you sign off on this cut, we'll go over Angelica's head and we'll do an Emmy campaign for you to be nominated for this much money. And I said, do you realize that that is Hollywood Royalty, that is John Houston's daughter. Do you get that she's an Academy Award winner and you're a corporate guian a suit who's not an artist. What are you doing? So I said no, and she called me. She was crying on the way to the meeting. She said, you know you should be dipped in gold o'donnald and she goes, not many people in Hollywood would do that, which even made me sat her like that not many people would do that, But you're on the pla Esa Shapiro says, no way, you're doing. What happens and she um becomes my agent. She gets a phone call, HI, do you represent that VJ? Can she play baseball? She calls me up. She says, can you play baseball? And baseball? I said, if there's one thing I can do better than Julia Roberts, it's baseball. And so I went and I auditioned for the movie. You had to play baseball to even get a reading, and I, of course I'm very good at baseball. So um, then it was Penny calling back. But anyway I went in. It was from her seeing me and went in and got the part. And then not Madonna, what's your first movie? Right? Oh? No, my first movie was with your brother? I have forgot about that car fifty four? Where are you with? With Daniel? With Daniel? Right? Well, when I was a j but you but you omit that you left that out, which I do as well. I did a movie which I pretend that didn't happen. Yeah, I almost forget it happened. I literally on my resume there's a movie I have just deleted it. Yeah. And when people will say, what's the first movie you made, I say, she's having a baby with John Hughes and lo, that's not necessarily true, because mine this movie, and I go, no, I didn't, Well, this movie was not released, right. So when the time that I did League of Their Own, League of their Own came out first because they held it on the shelf, and then after the success of like the flint Stones and Sleepless and League, then they released Everywhere You're going. You're showing up obviously with stand up and then you're making the guys laughing, jiggl the camera and there's a velocity and a pace and an energy to what you're doing. And now you're making movies. And does that become a different muscle for you? Do you sit there and go, man, this is slow and boring. Yes, But I love the camaraderie. I love your set of League their own with all the people playing baseball and oh no, it's the actors, the camera guys and like you know, all of the crew doing the thing where they picked the cards and for my family exactly, and it was so loving and so beautiful and stand up. You're alone. You're going on these clubs. You know, for ten years, fifteen years, I was alone on the road. You know, I'd go by myself. I had to get in a plane and I'd fly to someplace in the middle of the country and they picked me up. Feel homeless, yeah, and you feel lonely in a minute. Rosie o'donnald recalls her reaction when Ellen Degenerous told her she was coming out of the closet on her sitcom Ellen, and I remember thinking, why the hell is she doing this? She's going to ruin her entire career in her life. I'm Alec Baldwin and here's the thing. Take a listen to our archive more in depth conversations with artists, policymakers, and performers like Stacy Keach. I think the hardest thing about Hamlet is is, you know, is after that amazing duel in the last act when when he dies, you know is not to be called breathing on stage. Here from Stacy and fellow actor Michael Douglas that here's the thing. Dot Org, this is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. Rosie o'donnald claims she had a career in film simply because she could play baseball. That she was the only actress in Hollywood who could throw from third to first. Best player on the team, Thank you. Rosie played Doris Murphy in A League of their own, fictionalized account of the real life All American Girls Professional Baseball League. The film was a huge break for Rosie when they said that Madonna was going to be playing my best friend. You know, we had all been cast and Penny said that to me, she's going to come in. You have to make a laugh and hopefully she'll do the film. Like I a diarrhea. I thought, Madonna, Madonna? How do you be friends with Madonna? What the hell? Like? You know? In our lifetime? I'm fifty one years old, so we're almost the same age, right, And to see her at twenty something explode like she did. And I remember she had been friendly with Sandra Bernhard a little bit, and as I was a VJ, thinking how can you be friends with her? How could somebody be friends with like Elvis, like mcdonna? And here I am playing her best friends. So I knew when she was cast in that role that my career was going to take a whole different trajectory because of it. And it did. And for you, that experience of working with her, it was positive, it was positive, and it was sister Lee like know, some people have said to me, I thought you guys were lovers. I'm like, are you out of your mind? Like you know? Some even Sandra said to me, away from Madonna, please, I'm such an Irish Catholic girl like you can count on both hands how many people have been with my entire fifty one years. You know, my friend, I don't. I don't know. It never crossed my mind because I met her the day after I saw Truth or Dare. And in that movie Truth or Dare, she goes to her mother's grave and it's her own name on her mother's grave, and my mother same experience. My mother's name is minname. So when I went to see her grave when I finally got my license at seventeen years old, there I saw for the first time Roseanne O'Donnell. And it's flippy to think to yourself, I know someone else who experienced that same thing. So when I met her, I said, I saw your movie yesterday, and my mom died when I was little, and I'm named after her too, and there and it was like, right away we had a sister thing, you know, right away going on. Now, Penny's in the kind of comedy College of Cardinals. There she did the hit show. She's funny as hell. Was she helpful to you as a director and she just leave you alone? How how did you work as an actor? She was amazing because she I love to improvise, and I come to find out later in all the movies I did after that not every director likes this. But she would go, you know, okay, somebody got to go over there, caught a bull full and just stay come up with a hot door hope doorway. Now, seriously, half the time people didn't understand what she was saying. So I'd raised my hand and she got rosy again. All right, So my part was not really that big, and she kept giving me all this extra stuff to do, and if you got one take, she'd go try it again, like she'd get the grip. The guy played my dad was the grip, and he'd come down and he looked irish and older guy, and she said, okay, put a hat on him. He'll be your father, and let's talk about a steak dinner near the bus go like So it was a lot of improvisation, which for me is great, like doing you know, curb your enthusiasm like you do I know so well. I love that. I mean, that's to me the most fun because it's like stand up where you can go anywhere and say anything you want. Did you go right into another film before League got released? Yes, I did. Sleepless in Seattle, and so I did League and it wasn't out yet. And then my and now a woman who I mean, Penny is discerning, and Penny is you know, well regarded as a director and so forth. But now you go and work with a woman who was the most discerning and it was the most options and who I could have cast anybody and had anybody, and she chose you. And I'm so intimidated because it's Nora Fron and I've read every single thing she ever wrote in her life, and I knew about her sister and her parents and what they had written. So I go into the app Thorpe, into her big, you know apartment that has a library full of and I'm looking at what book she's reading, and I'm you know, and she calls me in and she says hello, and I say hello, and I'm still like happy to be there. And we clicked right away, and and she's like wow. She goes, wait a minute, and she goes and gets the script off the facts that Delia had been working on and pieces of new scene and she goes read this, and I read that, and then I left and I called my agent in the car and said, I got the job, and she said, you know, this is your second movie audition. You don't really understand. You got the first one, but you're not probably going to get this. And I said, no, I got the job. And I did. And the reason Nora told me was that night at dinner, she said, oh, I I interviewed this girl today. I think I might hire her. Name's Rosie O'Donnell. And her son, Jacob, who was ten at the time, who was a Madonna freak, was like, oh my god, mom, I know her. And he ended up being a gay man now who was a writer at the the Times right, a great guy. And and then Nora ended up getting me an apartment in the app Thorpe after the movie, and Jacob used to come over to my apartment and tell me about his being gay and not knowing how to tell his mom, and so I sort of helped What did you tell him? I helped him come out. His mother knew, but his mother said to me, do you think he's gay? I'm like, yes, I do, right, And he was like ten or eleven, She goes, I think he might be too. I said, yeah, he is. Some nights i'd come home when he's like fourteen years drunk outside. I'm like, come here, you're gonna go up to my apartment. Come with us. I take him up to the apartment. I'd call Nora, I'd go I have him. I'll bring him back in a little while. It was like living in Queens. Everybody knew each other. But he was a great kid. And you know, I have pictures of him playing with Parker, you know, when Parker was a baby, and then I have a picture of them when we did Love Laws and what I wore at the opening night Parker's six with something standing next to Jacob, And it's just so weird how life goes like that. I'm not big on the whole gay identity thing in terms of you know that that story, because I'm sure you've exhausted that. But what I'm curious about is how over the ark of a long career now that's changed for you. And it was being a gay woman, being a gay performer, going back to you know it is seventy eight to do at the club in Huntington's on through Now it's many many years. It's a thirty five years since you were a kid doing this stuff. How's that changed? For you. Remarkable the amount of change that's happened just in my lifetime. You know. I was coming out of therapy two weeks ago in Nyack, New York, and I see two high school girls holding hands walking through the parking lot and like, I almost fill up with you. I stopped them. I said, excuse me. Now, they have no idea right there, the there's a cut off. My fame is over right now. I know there are people who still, but it's not like it was right So I said excuse me, and they sort of like, what's this old lady's talking to me? I said, I just want to tell you that I'm a fifty one year old gay woman and as a a woman. To see you two girls, what are you in high school? They're like, yeah, we're in tenth grade. To see you holding hands in the middle of town walking through it just it moves me so much. And they're like, oh really, oh thanks, all right, see you here. I am like, come here, but I don't know. You know, people sort of knew that I was gay, in my opinion in show business because I never hit it. It's never like I pretended to have a boy friend or although people say I did that with Tom Cruise, but it wasn't a sexual thing with him. I still have a crush on him, you know, but it's not like I wanted to screw him. I just thought, God, that is a that is something about the exactly like to have him, you know, with no shirt on, painting something in my house, you know, and then leaving after he gave me breakfast exactly right, So anyway people knew was what I thought, right. But I remember, like when Ellen called me up and said, I'm going to have my character Ellen Morgan come out as a lesbian on my TV show, and I remember thinking, why the hell is she doing this? She's going to ruin her entire career and her life. It was such a foreign concept. This is pre Will and Grace. Okay, no one had ever even considered it. The only people who were out were rock stars. There was no actor or actress or comedian who was out. You know, I don't remember even Charles Nelson. Riley wasn't out. I mean, you know, certainly gayish people. And I remember thinking she's making a huge mistake, you know, And then there was that tremendous amount of fall out that happened afterwards. I was like, it would pained me for her. It really did. Now listen in hindsight, Oh my god, the courage that it took for her to do that at the time she did it, in the way she did it was pretty unbelievable, you know. I I did not possess that, And so she did that. And then Will and Grace came on, and I remember them telling me at my show, oh, there's a new sitcom that's starting. It's about a gay man living with a straight girl. And I go, that will never work. Remember Love Sydney with Tony Randall. He had his dead partner's picture on the mantel and the Catholic church was protesting and it was often two weeks. And this was Tony Randolph, right, So I thought, that will never work. So then Will and Grace comes on. Not only does it work, it blows up queer eye for the straight guy. It's like the society culture we have changed in such a quick amount of time that people don't even realize it. You know, to think that in my lifetime, in my career, that you can be an out performer actor playing against type. Neil Patrick Harris playing a womanizer on that show be out married with twin boys and it doesn't hurt your career and it doesn't do anything to you know. So in a way, it's the most beautifully astounding inspirational thing that I can think about it in my fifty one years of living now, in the time that you from being a young woman and a performer in this business and you're making your way and you're succeeding, and you're a gay woman, did you ever think about marriage, kids, family? Like, when did that polaroid begin to become more in focus. I always knew I wanted kids, you did always, But I never thought I would get married to a man. I mean I didn't really accept, of course, but yeah, I would not have turned that down. But I know, I just you know. I dated one guy when I was twenty eight for about a year and a half, two years. His name was Mike. We lived together, great guy, six ft one or six ft two. I had only dated two women before that. I just sort of didn't do it at all. It was just like, you know, whatever, and yeah, I got a career plan and uh so, um I dated this guy, and I remember thinking, maybe I'm not gay. Look at this, Maybe I'm not gay. But it turned out, you know, I was wrong. So uh, that was the only time that I thought to myself, well, maybe I am straight. Maybe this I don't know what this is. Maybe um you know, because it's it's like what people don't understand about homosexuality. It's not that you can't have satisfactory sex with the opposite gender. It's just that your heart and your soul and your connection and your desire for emotional intimacy is only really served by somebody of the same set. I've never heard anybody articulated that way before ever. Yeah, I've never heard anyone say that. I mean, but there was a period. Mike was the name. Yeah, you still want with him? Um, not so much. But we had been for about ten years. I was half a life ago. But did you leave all those people behind? Did you shed a skin when you became famous and went into the business, Because for me, all my friendships began when I got into this business. It's interesting. I have two friends, Jeannie and Jackie. They're my friends since I was in elementary school and they're still my best friends. And the three of us see each other at least, you know, Jackie probably twice a week. Jeanie, probably because she's out on the island at least once a month, and the three of us are like sisters and their family. To me, Jackie's mother raised me, you know, after my mother died, I would eat dinner at their house like five nights a week. She bought me my first bra, She bought me, you know, tampons when I needed them as a kid. She was a mother, right, So, and she's still alive Bernies and so I see Jackie like like a sister all the time. But aside from those two, I don't see anyone from high school. I don't see anyone from my old stomping grounds on Long Island. And most of my friends, aside from those two, are friends that I am out in this business because it's very hard for people to understand it is lonely. I mean, it's so lonely, and it's hard to explain it to someone else because they it's held up as the be all and end all. It's held up as and it it really isn't. The reality of it is very different than what you expected from it. I'll never forget. This is gonna seem mundane, perhaps, but this really defines what I'm talking about im. I would be sitting like I'm in the Canadian Rocky shooting a movie with Tony Hopkins, and I'll never forget my assistant would FedEx me my mail and I pick up this thing and it says, you know the dates of the Bacon exhibit at the met and it's going to close and I'm not going to get back there and I'm gonna miss the Bacon exhibit. I felt so awful because I thought, I'm missing my life, I'm missing everything. Like when I did thirty rock people say, why did you love thirty Rockets? Because they would work the schedule with me. When you're in the movie business, they are so punishingly unempathetic because they got ninety days to do it. They've got to get this thing done, and cutting days and cutting costs is what they're all back. Well, I remember when I was on my talk show when you were saying, I really want to get a sitcom. I really wanted to a Sitcome with me. Remember we were talking about it. I tell you, I said, we're gonna do Jackie Gleeson and you're Jackie Gleeson and I'm yeah, I said, you're gonna be the brassy, tough character, and I'm gonna be your witherming husband. Right. So I remember when people were saying that there was a show thirty Rock and Alec Bolan, and some people were saying to me, he's not gonna do a sick I'm like, yes he is. You know, because I knew because I had spoke, we had spoken about it, how taxing it is, and I knew what you were craving was some kind of a normal schedule, Like a sitcom is the perfect gig for every actor. If you could get a thirty minute sitcom, I think that, you know, one hour drama is just like doing a movie for nine months in a row. It's exhausting. In a minute, Rosie o'donald shares what it's like to be a new parent in your fifties. I'm all ears, this is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to here's the thing. Rosie O'Donnell has supported kids charities for most of her career. At age thirty three, she adopted a child of her own, a baby boy, Parker. The balancing act between motherhood and career, particularly in the entertainment industry, took her by surprise. When Parker was a baby, you know, I didn't know anyone who went a nanny. I grew up like you did. There was an unheard of thing. I didn't even know anyone who a babysitter, right, besides, somebody would come over for three hours when your parents went to you know, red Lobster. So um. I did Harry at the Spine, my first movie after he was born, and he was about three or four months old, maybe five months old, and I took him to Canada to film, and I asked my cleaning lady to come with me to watch him because I didn't have anybody to help. So she came. And the third day that I came home from a twelve hour day on the set, he wouldn't come to me. I won't come to you, buddy, and he would cry. He wouldn't. He was staying with Maria, and I remember at that moment, I called my agent and said, you need to get me a job that's going to keep me in New York because I don't want him growing up on movie sets. I want him to have his own bedroom. I want him to know his cousins. I want him to have a normal life. And so that's the reason I did my talk show was because I wanted you and I it's a mirror. That's why I did thirty Rock and and my daughter lived in l A. But I said to Lauren, he said, what's it gonna take. I will give you off every Monday and every Friday, any weekend you want to go to go see your daughter who was in l A. Which in the beginning I would do. And then as my daughter got older, I mean I stopped going every other weekend because like I would drive out there and like drive my daughter to a party and drop her off. Believe its hell, But when does the moment come You're like, let's have the baby, Let's get this pot on the stove and get this thing going. What happens? Well, I did, um, all those movies in a row, that like the number one movie, three summers in a row, right, So first I did A League, and then Sleepless in Seattle and then the flint Stones. Well that's pretty astonishing, you know, especially because I was like, um, those wasn't a trained actress. I was a comic writer, didn't even really go to college. I went for one year, so I thought that was pretty astounding. And um, I wanted to do Broadway and Greece was coming out. So I call my agents, said I want to go do that. She's like, are you kidding me? Or on this role? Movie wise? And I'm like, but I really really want to do it. So I'd saved a lot of money, you know, I'd spend wisely. I'm not like a big don't go buy clothes and shoes and stuff, and so I exactly, it's the truth. So I went and um auditioned for Greece and I got it on Broadway and I said, when I'm done with this run, I'm gonna adopt a baby. So I was thirty two. How long a year? And can I tell you, Alec, dear Lord and heaven. It was like groundhog Day the movie, only without Bill Murray. Oh my god, it was. I couldn't. I would love to do Broadway again, but I would never come in to talk. Yeah, Lord, I know, I'm sorry I missed it, but boy, that's something. That's something. And uh, so I decided I was going to adopt a baby. And it wasn't I wasn't dating anyone. Wasn't like you know I was. I saw I was seeing a girl who was in the cast of Greece. But I it wasn't like we were gonna have kids together. I was going to adopt this baby. And she's like, well, what about me. I'm like, well, I don't know about you, but this is what I'm doing in my life. And so I adopted. She's like, well, what would I be to him? I don't know what you're gonna be. It wasn't like I was doing a week. I was just adopting a baby myself. And then I went and did Harry at the Spy and said to my agent, I got to stay in New York. And at the time Kathy Lee was threatening to quit. I said, get me that gig with Reach and they said, oh, she's staging, but they are willing to give you your own show like that, and I said, well, the only thing I want to do is MERV Griffin. I just simply rip off his show. I would do exactly MERV Griffin, a talk show when nobody gets hurt, where everybody's friends, when nobody's gonna embarrass anyone. People in Hale Helium you got it and yet fun cooking segments and everybody likes each other. It wasn't like candalized like right. So I drew the set like I said, this is what I want the set to look like. I drew where the band was supposed to be. I decided I wanted to current like I knew exactly what I did the logo myself, like I was totally like, here's how you do the club all over. I was just gone, he's not coming down here. Actually he was around then, and he was so sweet to me and Mike Douglas because it was a tribute sort of to both of them and Dinah Shore, who was gone. But you know, those are the shows I watched as a kid. That's funny how when you talked to before about a world without VCRs and stuff for them when when we were kids, when we watched TV. I'd watch Dino Shot Me too. I'd sit in my house and be like, I don't know who the hell is brought is, but I'm gonna watch because the point is what else was there there was? Like those shows? Or digest them because it's like, what the hell are we gonna do? Mcgilla Garilla that of the Little Rascals, right, or you know Kimber the White Lion, remember that speed racer. Yeah. So I did the pilot and then I went to Napty and all of the TV people, which is a convention for television executives station owners, and they came and they said, well, if it doesn't work, are you gonna do like you know Haraldo and Jenny Jones, because those were the shows that were number one at the time. It was, you know, more format. They were afraid that this wouldn't work because it hadn't been on in twenty five years, right, And they were afraid that I would become just like the other shows where people were punching each other and you know this, I had an affair with him, and that I would change the genre correct, And I said I will never do that. I will just walk away before I do that. And they said, all right, we'll try it. So they were hesitant, the station owners. It's not your baby exactly, everybody, please. I couldn't do that, I really could. I don't know how they sleep. I watched Morius still on them like THK guy, what to seeing Connie talk about? At night? Okay, today I had two treads, vest Night, short people, and they had twelve boyfriends. I don't know how many years do you do the talk show? Six? I told them. Initially I had a baby who was one. I said, I'm going to do the show for five years, and then I'm quitting before he goes to kindergarten. I said, I just want you to know before he starts, like first grade, real school, I'm quitting because this is a toxic business. I can't imagine what it would do to a kid. It's too much for me. And I also knew in Success how much money it was. It was an insane amount of money. So I told them from the beginning, I'm only doing uh five, I was a four year deal. I said, I'm only doing four years because he would be fun. They said yes. But in year one it was such a big hit that they said, please give us two more years. Please, We'll give you, you you know, the Oprah deal. So I agreed to do six. Now in my fifth year, they said, please sign us. That's when I begged you to do the Jackie Gleason spa off. And you turned to me and said, you leaned into me very common. You said, I can't. I'll never forget that. You'd lean to me and you said I can't. You said, I'm about to sign a deal. I'm gonna make quote that sick Oprah money exactly. It was sick Oprah money. Yeah. So I signed on for two more years, and then you know, in the fifth year, they kept saying, you know, at one year left, come on, we're gonna offer you this. Honestly, the truth is, I felt, if you have a hundred million dollars in the bank and you think you need a hundred million more, you're missing your life. I had three children at the time, right, I had three kids under the age of five, and my mother died at forty. I was thirty nine. My show ended right when I was forty. I thought, any day they're going to diagnose me with breast cancer, I'm gonna be gone. I wanted to go spend the time raising my children the way my mother didn't get to. So there was no amount of money. They kept upping the money and upping the money. And you know, Dick Robertson, Dick Robinson has said, to me, who's still around. The older guy used to work at Warner Brothers. He said, never in his life did he see somebody walk away from that much money, He said, he still doesn't believe sometimes he thinks about that moment, you know, because he walked in and he's like, I've been authorized to present you with this, you know, and thinking I was gonna go, well, okay, but when you walked away from that, because this is something that I wrestled with. Sometimes you want to be more proactive and involved with your kids. I mean that that's I don't don't dispute that. I mean, it's obviously very very important. I made a lot of my choices around it as well, like, like, beyond this thing of not wanting to have money control your life, was it also did you become someone you said, I'm sick of her and I'm sick of that, Like that's Rosie in one stage of the rocket Ship and now I was trying to walk away from them. Yes, I had morphed into a different person, right because at the beginning of that show, the concept of knowing Barbra streisand of knowing Tom Cruise, of knowing you like I had worked with the actors I had worked with. I knew those people and I was friends with them. But that didn't mean that I felt I was part of the showbiz community. But when that show took off and I had literally interviewed everyone from Walter Cronkite to you know, Joan Plowwright like to, you know, everyone was happy to be on your show exactly, and it was you know, it was the first one of its kind. There's a lot of them now, and you know, Ellen has has done it amazingly well. And she had all of my same producers, she had Jim Teratory, she had the same team, and she went and she did it. And I think she's very good at it, you know, I really do. But I know that I could not have done it any longer than I did it. I knew I was not a marathon. And then when you stopped what happened, I was, um. I felt free. First of all, I had just sort of come out right. I had written my first book and it talked about my being gay and all of the struggles that I had with how to how to announce that. And I did it in conjunction with an A c l U case about force to care because I was a foster parent and blah blah blah. So I didn't want it just to be about hey, like, let's talk about my sex life and sexual preference. You know, I wanted it to be about something more. So there was a case with the Loft and Crew tou case down in Florida to men who had adopted this children and they cyril converted from HIV positive to negative because both men were nurses and they wanted to take the kids away after they ciril converted. So I, actually, there's there was a law at the time in Florida that gay people could not adopt, even the force to chieved children they raised. So I I went through this lawsuit and well the book came out three months after nine eleven, so it was sort of like nobody really cared nine eleven happened. And thank god I was off the following May because I did not think and I think there was some you know, intervention from above that I was off during the Bush administration. I think I would have probably lost my mind on national television, you know, when I could not believe when my show was off and we were going into war, going to Afghanistan, like and Phil Donoghue was on again, and you know, I I spray painted no war on the back of my denom jacket. I could Oh yeah, I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't believe now aproposal that I mean, obviously you like me, you don't hesitate to speak your mind. Now you went from being ubiquitous the show and so forth, And do you enjoy that now where you don't you're not out there and you're not an opinion maker. Yes, but the fall between one and the other extreme was intense and sharp and shocking. Well, you know, I when I was on the cover of news Week, you know, when my show premiered, said the Queen of Nice, I remember holding it up on on live TV and saying, this is gonna bite me in the as one day, because you know what, I'm not that nice. If you ever saw my stand up BacT, I go after people and issues that I find abhorrent and repulsive, and I present them in a comical way that makes you laugh and yet think. So I knew that that was never ever the totality of who I was. So um, I was not you know, naive enough to think that I was going to slimply glide slowly down towards the anonymity, you know. Uh, but it was very, very harsh and it was very very quick, and it was a very big shock. Also, I was sued by the magazine company. And when you're sued by a corporation, right, I was sued for three million dollars right by this corporation they I when my show was ending, I was convinced to do a magazine like Oprah did with my name on it, Rosie, and I was totally had creative control and they had the sales kind of control. What happened was after my show ended, the guy who worked there said, well, you signed a stupid contract and your lawyers weren't good. And I owned the show and I'm gonna do what I want and fired the staff. And UM wanted to do like thinner thighs in thirty days and all the things that are not met. And I said, well you can't do that, and he said, well, you didn't see this loophole in the contract. So I remember saying to UM, my friends are to some learned people I knew who is the toughest and the best female lawyer in New York And they said Mary Joe White and Mary Joe White, who brought down the first bombers at the nine eleven. The Khalid Khalil Khalior, whatever his name is, and she has just been appointed with the Obama administration. She's like a huge mockey. Mark Well. I went into her office on a Saturday. She had shorts on and a T shirt, and I gave her the contract and I said, now I want to ask you and my writer. Am I wrong? She said, well, you're right, and I said, She goes, but I don't know that means you're gonna win. I said, but I am right. What I'm saying is right that this man cannot take what I've worked for for twenty years, my name and what it represents, and reform at him because I signed a contract. Susanne Summers correct or, who actually like and think is very were more like, make me into a Cosmo girl, right, And she said, no, you're right, and if you're tough enough, you'll win. But they're going to put you through hell. And they did. I was like on the cover of the Post like nine three times. And when you came out of it, you prevailed. Yes, But it was exhausting, extensive and painful litigation. It certainly was. Now we're going to run out of time, so I want to say two things. And I want to say this carefully because this is not about personal animus or somebody who pissed you off. What's one thing you were involved in that you went to the map cause wise or something or an event, something you really went out there and was the most outrageous that made you the most indignant. You know, I think it would probably be um the right of gay people to adopt in Florida. We actually did a canvassing of the state of Florida back and you know, in the nineties when my show was on, because I thought, if we're gonna fight this, we're gonna lobby, let's try to see what the what the temperature is of the state and found a surprising amount, like disproportionately large amount of people would prefer that children had no parents than gay parents. That was at the time in the nineties. Now, look how things have changed now, right that the ruling has been overturned, and you know, gays are allowed to adopt in pretty much every state I think at this point, and we're allowed to get married and we're allowed so a lot has changed since then, but that was quite disheartening at the time. I think. Also, you know what my saying that I do not believe the official story of nine eleven has brought a tremendous amount of angst into my life. And I don't accuse anyone specifically or say that I know any answers. I simply say it defies the laws of physics. I mean, we're here, we are. It's the fiftieth anniversary of JFK's assassination, and people still don't want to talk about that. Well, and that's when when people come over to me and say, I won't talk to you about nine eleven, I said, before we have the conversation, I just want to ask you one thing, who killed John Kennedy? And if they say Lee Harvey Oswald, I said, then we're not going to have a conversation. But if they you know, because honestly, you either have the benevolent father image in your mind and you can't right. It's the cognitive dissidence, right, You can't hold two opposing ideas in your brain at one time. You can love the United States of America, right, and I love my country and therefore I want to seek exactly right. And therefore democracy demands dissent. And if you have questions, that's part of being and you and I have shared that we're people doubt our patriotism because we're critically I'm going to go off Twitter. It's too much negativity, and it's too much negativity that I don't get in real life. I can walk anywhere even to like, you know, my son goes to a military school. These are all Republicans. These are you know, hello, miss o'donald, thank you. You know, like unbelievably crimes people in the world. I experience of Twitter correct, and that's what it is. It's like standing on a stage in a dark and comedy club and people throwing shit at you and you're still trying to do your act. I want to close with one thing, and that is I watch people who are virtuosic musicians. I mean, I do this announcing for the New York Philharmonic. I just went to Long Longs benefit on Monday at Carnegie Hall. I have this tremendous, tremendous, almost insatiable appetite for the classical repertoire and the people who play it well. And and I think to myself, you know, where is that and what we do? Like acting? Those people talk about Olivier and Kevin Klein and you know, and Colin Firth and all. They're really really beautifully etched actors of their day. And then I think about you, and I think about to be able to talk on a talk show and be able to communicate the way you did. You remind me in the conversational mode of a classical piano player, because you can touch, you can do anything, you can play anything. You are funny as hell, You're tough, you're smart, you are so many things. You could have done anything. You're so tenacious, and you're so smart. If this hadn't worked out for you, what was among the fallbacks? What might you have done with your life of you didn't do this. I never had a fallback on purpose, and my dad used to say that all the time, you need a fallback, But I knew that this career was so difficult to succeed in that if you had a fallback, you would fall back. So I didn't have one. However, I know I would have been a teacher, because it was teachers who saved my life. We were in an abusive all my dad had some issues after my mother. I didn't even before, and it was teachers in the public school system who saved my life. Literally, I don't think I would be here. I don't think. You know, when my grandmother died, who who had lived with us after when my mother had died, you know, when she died when I was in high school, all the teachers came to the funeral, all the like we were. We were five orphan children pretty much who were embraced and taken in by the teachers in our communities. And I definitely would have been a teacher. I love kids, and it shows. Rosie's fifth child, Dakota, was born this past January. Her oldest, Parker, was seventeen at the time. Honey, it's a different gig. Oh my god. First of all, it's so much calmer. You're so much more relaxed. You're enjoy every moment so much more like this baby. First of all, she's a dream. She she wakes up and she goes to bed at nine o'clock after bottle, wakes up at six, give her a bottle, and she sleeps in the bed with us till about every night. That's you know. And Michelle, my wife, this is our first kid, goes, let's get another one. I'm like, you're out of your mind. They don't come like this normally. No, She's just it's a dream and I feel younger because of it. I feel like that my design, oh my god, I like it, like turned on every creative. It's just it rebirthed me. It rebirthed me in a way that I was not expecting, and I'm so thankful for There's something about this experience. Uh that's very different from the other kids. You know, when you your first baby. I always say, the other kids never get what that first kid got. And I'm not the first kid in my family right my brother Eddie is so in a way, this baby feels like the first kid all over again. Rosie O'Donnell entertainer, activist, philanthropist, extraordinaire and above all a mom to five with some good hand me downs. I suspect thank you for doing this, and I love you and I love you too, and I'm sending you so many baby things. Don't buy everything, because I have a lot of extra. Here's the thing. You can hear more in depth conversations in our archive from Brian Williams to Chris Rock. I don't know about you. I find a business a lot smaller, less movies, less I mean less stuff that relates to me. You know what, less stuff that relates to me. I'll say that I'm a very emotional guy, and I often get a catch in my voice. I'm a very patriotic guy. I kind of have a little schmaltz in me. I guess. Listen to more and Here's the Thing dot Org. Here's the Thing is produced by Emily Botine and Kathy Russo with Chris Bannon, Jim Briggs and Herbsman, Melanie Hoops, Monica Hopkins, Trey k Sharon Machee, and Lou Okowski. Thanks to Larry Josephson and the Radio Foundation, This is alec old one and you're listening to Here's the Thing.

Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin

Award-winning actor Alec Baldwin takes listeners into the lives of artists, policy makers and perfor 
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