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New OWN star Rosie O'Donnell has sights set for Russell Brand, Adele as guests

By April MacIntyre Jul 30, 2011, 5:55 GMT

06/06/2011 - Rosie O\'Donnell - Bowery Residents\' Committee Inaugural Benefit Gala - Mandarin Oriental Hotel - New York City, NY, USA © Marco Sagliocco / PR Photos

The bright spot for Oprah today at the Television Critics' Association summer press tour was bringing out force of nature Rosie O'Donnell, who humorously described her fateful phone call with Oprah one night that changed her life.

"When she [Oprah] does call, like the first time she called [me], it said blocked. And my friend who usually calls me with blocked is Ruby from the Style network, right? She calls me a lot at night, so it was late at night, and the phone rang, and I’m like, 'Ruby, you asshole. Why are you calling me so late?'

'No, Rosie. It’s Oprah.' I’m like, 'Well, that’s pretty funny. Anyway, your boyfriend is an asshole in that last episode,' and I, like, went on and on. Finally, she was like 'Rosie, it is Oprah Winfrey.' And I stood up in my bedroom. [gets out of chair and walks the stage with phone to her ear] 'Oh. I’m sorry, Oprah. I guess you’re really used to that, people not knowing it’s you, although why would you be calling people who didn’t know it was you. Hi. Yes. Hi.'

Rosie continued, "It was like junior high school humiliation, and I have gotten better. We had dinner last week, and I was pretty good the whole dinner. I made sure not to have one drink. I was like give me Diet Coke and talk slowly!" 

Rosie O'Donnell is bringing her new talk show to OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network weeknights at 7 pm in the fall.

Rosie chose Oprah and OWN over a broadcast network, and after telling a humorous anecdote about the nature of agents, she ceded it was the shoddy treatment that NBC doled out to Conan O’Brien on “The Tonight Show” that made up her mind.

“So my desire to attach to a major corporation that had just taken 15 years of service and treated it as if it was nothing was a huge factor in me not signing” with a major network, she told the assembled TCA members today.

This is a big year for Rosie. She is 50, and ready to reinvent her daytime talk trade to a 7 PM slot for OWN.

"It’s a great time, 7 o'clock, where you can sit down with your family before your viewing night begins," an animated O’Donnell  said of her own show. 

Avoiding Kryptonite topics like Barbara Walters and Donald Trump, to her publicist Cindi Berger's relief, Rosie did share her new found infatuation: Russell Brand.

Rosie says, "I hope we get Russell Brand. I love the guy. I didn’t really know anything about him. He hosted the MTV Awards. I thought, 'He’s not very funny. Who is he?' And then I watched him do a comedy special about hosting those awards, and it was the most brilliant thing I’d ever seen in my life. Then I started Googling him and found out who he was in England and what happened with him, and he did an interview on the BBC that was possibly the most introspective and precise and exact discussion about fame and its effect on your personality and your world and your life that I had ever seen anywhere.

And then by chance, three months ago, I bumped into him at the airport, and he is shooting a move in Miami, so I’ve been spending time with him in Miami, and I find him fascinating. So he would be on an entire show."

Another hopeful get? Singer Adele, who Rosie shared was "epic and gorgeous and fantastic and so positive for women in every way, that she would be the guest."