Rosie O’Donnell signed a multimillion-dollar deal with OWN for a talk show that was supposed to save Oprah’s failing network. Instead, it tanked. Ramin Setoodeh talked with staffers about what went wrong.
The St. Patrick’s Day episode of The Rosie Show on Friday opened with an unknown tenor crooning the hymn “Ireland (I’m Coming Home).” Sitting behind her desk in a small, audience-free studio, Rosie O’Donnell blabbed about how much she loved Chicago, her place of residence, and how she wore a coat for only two days this winter. She pontificated about her upcoming 50th birthday next week. She said that when she was born, her parents considered naming her after the season. “Spring O’Donnell,” she said with a chuckle. “It doesn’t really flow.”
The episode trudged along, rather inconspicuously, with the first guest: the tattoo artist, former reality star, and ex-fiancée of Jesse James, Kat Von D. The Rosie we all knew and loved—the one who built a $100 million empire with her landmark talk show that ran for 1,193 episodes from 1996 to 2002—was virtually absent, replaced by a subdued and checked-out host. “Um … so … you’ve been in the limelight, had a public romance?” O’Donnell asked. “I thought that was the first famous guy you went out with,” she said, not even mentioning James by name. Since the episode was pretaped, it made no reference to something else significant: the show’s demise…
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