After Rosie O’Donnell left The View for a second time in February 2015, she says now that she won’t be returning as long as moderator Whoopi Goldberg is on the show. In an April 7 interview with Howard Stern, he asked the 58-year-old comedienne about a possible return to the ABC talker and she shut him down, saying, “No. I think we all agreed that the last time it was better for everyone. Whoopi really didn’t like me.” Rosie re-joined the show in fall 2014 with a revamped panel that included Rosie Perez and Nicolle Wallace. She ended up not even finishing out the season, departing the show in Feb. 2015. Rosie initially appeared on The View in 2006-07.
When Howard asked her to explain why Whoopi didn’t like her, Rosie revealed, “I assumed that I was coming in to be part of an ensemble, right? Throw the ball back and forth. Everybody shoot, everybody take a shot, right? And from day one she was upset with…I threw to commercial cause I didn’t think she saw the countdown, the guy was going like this” she said, motioning with her hand counting down to zero. “Now listen, she’s been there forever. Maybe that’s normal…I saw that and there was a pause and I said ‘We’ll be right back after this’ and that was the first day and there was trouble from then on.”
Rosie even met with Whoopi ahead of her second tenure and got Whoopi’s blessing to come aboard. But it turned out that even though they seemed to be on the same page, things changed once they got on set. “I know that she thought that she liked it how it was. And I mean we were friends in the celebrity vernacular for a long time. When I went to do that show I went to her house and talked to her. We had a great sort of ‘Come to Jesus’ and I told her I only want to do this if you want me to do this with you. I thought we were going to be like Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan, like boom boom swish. Like it was going to be the greatest thing of all time,” referring to the legendary Chicago Bulls teammates.
Howard brought up how Rosie had once said that Whoopi was as mean to her as anyone has ever been. Rosie then elaborated, “She was mean to me on live TV. When people say what happened, I say go back and watch them. It’s not like a mystery. Watch the way it went down. I don’t need to say anything. Did it hurt my feelings? Tremendously. It was trippy to me. But I knew I had to leave. So I was like ‘I gotta get out of here, I can’t do this. I’m not fighting with Whoopi Goldberg. I have no desire to fight with her.”