Rosie O'Donnell interview, new OWN chat show

By April MacIntyre Oct 11, 2011, 4:33 GMT

The Rosie Show debuted on OWN on Monday, October 10th at 7:00 P.M. Eastern and Pacific and 6:00 P.M. Central.

The Rosie Show debuted on OWN on Monday, October 10th at 7:00 P.M. Eastern and Pacific and 6:00 P.M. Central.

Her opening night monologue went like this: “People in Chicago are a lot nicer than people in New York…I’ve been here three months and nobody has given me the middle finger yet…"

Russell Brand, her first guest claims the materialistic age has reached its natural conclusion.

Rosie chatted about her new show with us and several media outlets the other day.

Monsters and Critics:  For the last TCAs, you talked about Adele and Russell Brand as being your ideal first guest, and I wondered if you could add to that list and give us a hint on who you're trying to wrangle or have wrangled for your show.

Rosie O'Donnell: Well, we do have Russell. We have Russell for the first day. On Monday, he'll be here, and that was a thrill for me. I met him early in the summer and just told him how much I admired him, and we got together in Miami, and we've been email buddies, and I met his wife and her sister.

And, I don't know, it's like a Hollywood love story, I got to say. I admire the man so much. And I didn't want to put him on the spot, but I did tell every interview person when they said "Who would be your dream?" that it was him, and he wrote me an email and said "If I'm your dream, honey, I'm there."

And true to his word, here he will be on Monday, so I'm thrilled about that. Adele we are hoping to get. She just cancelled her North American tour. She has throat issues. But as soon as she's up and healthy, she'll be here, and that's thrilling for me. I'd love to have Melissa McCarthy on. I could not believe how funny she was on "SNL." Literally, like honestly, had to wear a Depends undergarment watching that show. I've never seen anyone as funny, never mind their first time, as the host, so I'd love to have her on the show.

There are so many new young talents that I think are astounding. Emma Stone is one of them, a brilliant young actress. I met her actually one night at a restaurant. I was out with my friend Natasha, who's one of those youngsters. I could be her mom. I'm 50. She's 30, and she spends with all those young, hip actors, and so I've met a bunch of them through Natasha Lyonne, and a lot of them are fascinating to me, and Emma Stone would be one of them.

So I have a huge wish list. Ryan Gosling I think is an amazing actor. I-- really interested in what he has to say and who he is. You know, I'm sort of fortunate in that I've interviewed so many people. I was on for six years. We usually had three guests per show. I was really fortunate to have spoken to so many Hollywood luminaries in my career already that it's the new ones and the young ones, the ones that I sort of missed that I would love to get to sit down with now

TV America: Rosie, this summer you told us that it's all happened so fast that you were still staying at a hotel in Chicago. Tell us, are you still staying at a hotel? And give us kind of that timeline of how this evolved so quickly. When did you decide to do the show, and how quickly after that did you scoot out to Chicago?

Rosie O'Donnell:  When we moved here in the summer, I had looked around for places and didn't know anything about Chicago at all, although I had filmed "League of Their Own" here for a couple weeks, and I had done standup here throughout my career, mostly at the Improv, which is no longer open, in the heart of Chicago. I wasn't really familiar with the city or where anything was or in relation to Harpo, so they put me up at a residential hotel, the Elysian, which is actually beautiful and gorgeous and lovely.

And when we figured out that my 14-year-old daughter would be living here with me and that my other children would be coming back and forth all the time, the two little ones, we realized it really wasn't big enough and that we need outdoor space, because sitting in a hotel room with them for a four-day weekend was a little bit much. So luckily one of the presidents of Harpo, Erik Logan, had a house for sale, and I went and looked at it, and I called him up and said "If you will leave it furnished, I mean, like down to the toilet paper and some of the nightshirts, I think we have a deal," because it's a beautiful place that he had just really finished renovating about two years ago, and it's turn-key ready.

And I actually move in tomorrow, so I'm thrilled about that, and I love being in a neighborhood and places that I can walk to the restaurants for dinner and not have to order room service and, you know, feel more like a home. I actually love it here and can imagine moving and living here for this next chapter of my life.

US Weekly: What are you most excited about starting a new show, and how is it working with the Oprah?

Rosie O'Donnell:  Well, the Oprah is sort of magical, and I was very overwhelmed at just being in her presence when she called me and said "Is it true?" And I was like "Is what true?" She's like "That you would want to do this for me." I'm like "Yes, ma'am." So she flew to my house, and we had like a four-hour conversation. And at the end of the conversation, she said "Why is it that you'd rather do it for me than the network you're about to sign with?"

And I'm like "Because you're you." I think she doesn't quite get the effect that she's had on most of the country, if not the entire world. And for me, I'm about to turn 50 in March. Half my life I've watched her on television, and I was one of those crazy super-fans who used to VCR it back in the old days and then put her on my Tivo, and I would watch it every night. So it was a huge thrill for me and a vote of confidence.

You know, the truth is, when I was about to sign with NBC, I questioned whether or not I would be able to do it and to sort of withstand the network kind of pressure and the network mishigas that happens and happened. And right around that time the Jay Leno/Conan O'Brien fiasco had just finished, and I was not feeling very safe or secure in the network's investment in their talent.

So when Oprah Winfrey said to me "Would you do it for me?" which had been my first desire as well-- when people started calling me right after she said she was going to leave her program, I called my agent and said "Does she need someone? Because if she needs somebody for her network, I'd rather do it there." But agents never really care about your emotional desires.

They care more about their financial bottom line. So you make a lot more money on network TV than you do on cable, but to me it wasn't ever about the money. No part of my career was ever about money.

It was always about trying to do the best job in the best place that would be most congruent with my life and my values. And that's definitely where I ended up, largely because I do believe in what she taught us all, that you can live your best life, and if you dream it, you can live it.

And a large part of my career and my success is because of watching her and learning from her, so to be here now with her is beyond a dream come true. It's like everybody's-- for me, it's like winning the lottery, and I couldn't be more thrilled. So I'm excited to get started, and I hope that I serve her and the network well.
Moderator:  Our next question...

St. Petersburg Times: So there's a sense amongst some of us who cover television that this is a really important time for OWN. Oprah is kind of really paying attention to the channel now. She's very involved with the programming, and your show was one of the most anticipated shows, even when the channel was launched and announced back in January. Does it feel like that to you, and how is the OWN of Oprah's involvement and being really focused on it different than maybe the OWN that we've seen when she was also balancing the syndicated show?

Rosie O'Donnell:  Well, when I signed on, it was over a year and a half ago, and I knew that she still had her final season to do, and we had discussed sort of not really focusing or interfering and just allowing her to finish out through May 25th. And that's sort of what I did. I, along with the rest of the country, you know, watched every episode of the last season, and when she was done, she took a vacation, and that's when we started.

So I didn't really start here until after Fourth of July weekend, and by then she was already back to work. Although she was going to take a large break, she only took a small break. They launched the network in January I think to take advantage of the fact that she was still on every day, but truthfully she wasn't available, because to try to end 25 years of the number-one show in daytime's history is a pretty big endeavor.

So now that she does have the ability to focus on the network, it's almost as though she's just beginning now. So I think for Oprah and for the network, we do start on Monday. We begin the actual real launch. It was sort of a soft launch in January, and now we begin again. And so I, like everyone else, have tremendous faith in her ability to do almost anything, and a woman with that kind of power and intellect and emotional accessibility-- I think when she puts her mind to anything, it gets done. So we're all excited.

I don't feel any pressure. Some people have asked "Do I feel pressure?" I feel nothing but privilege, truthfully, and it's going to be thrilling. For her to not only ask me to be on her network but for her to also give me her studio, her staff, her buildings and welcome me to her city-- it's an unbelievable city, Chicago. She is totally the mayor of the city, the emotional mayor, because everywhere I go, people are like "Hey, Rosie, thanks for coming here.

Hey, Ro, how you doing?" I have yet to pay for a meal in any restaurant. I have yet to-- at my hotel I was staying, there were gifts of cupcakes and chocolate and "Welcome to Chicago," and it's been an unbelievable welcome, and it's all really because of the goodwill that she's garnered for over two decades here. And so she has set me up in a way that few ever get to with a generosity that's not often found in Hollywood. So I'm really thrilled, and I think that we begin again on Monday with her show, "Lifeclass," and with my show.
 
Globe and Mail: How has the daytime TV universe changed since your last talk show, and is it easier or more difficult for you going into this new venture that is on cable?

Rosie O'Donnell:  It's changed completely. It's done a 360. It's not the same landscape in any capacity. When I started in 1996, I went to the NATPE conference and had to convince people that I was not going to do a "Jerry Springer"-type show. I had to literally sit down with station owners and advertisers and tell them, no, I was going to do Merv Griffin. And the philosophy at the time was "That will never work," because what was number-one in daytime in '96 or what was drawing all of the media attention at least-- a "Jenny Jones" viewer had been-- a guest, rather, had been murdered, and Geraldo Rivera had his nose broken.

That's when I entered into the foray, so I was dubbed the Queen of Nice. Comparatively I was, because what we were seeing was violence on a daily basis. So with the exception of "Oprah," there was no other show on TV that was putting forth messages of positivity back in 1996. So it was a whole different game.

Also, the Internet was not yet flourishing. I remember having meetings with Warner Brothers and saying to them, you know, "Can we do an Internet component?" and they're like "People don't have computers," and they later bought AOL. That was a problem. But they didn't really understand the Internet and the way that media is now consumed by the average person at home. They want their celebrities accessible.

There was no TMZ, there was no media Internet pop culture forum like there is now. There's such fractured viewing styles in the afternoon. Used to be you really had three options. You were going ABC, NBC or CBS. You were either going to watch game shows, talk shows or soap operas, and that was it. But it's changed completely now. You know, the amount of people available to watch TV-- the kind of numbers that we got in the '90s were 5.3s, sixes sometimes. Now people get ones on network television, never mind on cable.

So I think for children as well, for kids under the age of 18, they don't know the difference between network TV and cable TV. My children think that Animal Planet is as big of a network as NBC or CBS. They don't have any idea how to differentiate between the two, and I think that that's the vast majority of people now watching or consuming entertainment in any form. So I think it's a whole different world, it's a whole different game.

And to be back in the game with a Oprah Winfrey jersey on is inspiring for me, to be on her team, to be playing for her side, to know what she's about and that she's not simply a corporation with a bottom line of financial gain. She's a woman who has spent her life trying to enlighten, encourage and teach, and I agree with who she is as a public figure and what she has done with her power and ability, and it's an honor to be in the game on her side.

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