Rosie O’Donnell is reflecting on her infamous spat with Elisabeth Hasselbeck on The View.
The 63-year-old former co-host of the daytime talk show made an appearance on Nova’s Ricki-Lee, Tim & Joel.
During the conversation, she opened up about the 2007 incident, and how she believes it was all a set-up by her producer.
Keep reading to find out more…
“That’s the one everyone likes,” she said of the fight.
“Well, listen, it was a good one, but you should have known that what I was thinking the whole time was, I cannot believe that this woman, after all I did for her, because when I took that job, I made one commitment to myself, that I was not going to be her enemy, that I was going to meet her as a person,” she said.
“And so 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. Like I bent over backwards for this woman, and here she was coming at me on national TV about whether or not I was patriotic.”
“So 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, came back and walked out and never went back. And I knew right after that, because 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 is supposed to be my team!” Rosie said.
“And then when they had the split-screen,” she began to explain, adding that she didn’t know that would happen.
“Our producer is not a ‘on the fly kind of guy’…he wouldn’t have been like ‘lets’ go to a spilt screen’…that was prepared! So yes, the whole thing I think was a set-up.”
“They were right to have me leave that show. 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… I remember being on that show when I started going, ‘Well, we have to talk about this. It’s all that’s in the news’…they’d say ‘No we can’t’….the producer was a man on the number one women’s voice show,” she went on to say of her exit.
“Bill Getty…he was not a great guy if you ask me…he would give Elisabeth Hasselbeck the Republican talking points every day before the show…so all I had to do was read the Republican talking points to know exactly where she was going,” Rosie added. Watch above.
