Rosie O’Donnell Escalates Whoopi Goldberg Feud: “It Was Really Painful to Me to Feel How Much She Didn’t Like Me”

Rosie O’Donnell is adding fuel to her feud with Whoopi Goldberg. This week, O’Donnell stopped by Andy Cohen’s Sirius XM show, where she discussed her contentious relationship with Goldberg and Ramin Setoodeh’s tell-all book Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of The View. The actress and comedian told Cohen that she was excited to work with Goldberg when she returned to The View in 2014, but things quickly “got off to the wrong foot [sic].” Explained O’Donnell, “It was really painful to me to feel how much she didn’t like me.”

O’Donnell told Cohen that before she returned to The View in 2014 (she previously hosted from 2006 to 2007), Goldberg often looked “disengaged” in her role as moderator. “There’s a fair characterization to say that before I went on there, she was not that interested in The View,” O’Donnell said of Goldberg. “She wouldn’t talk when there were other guests, she would just sit there.”

However, the veteran comedian still respected Goldberg, and she knew that she had to tread lightly before accepting ABC’s offer to return. “So, when they asked me to do it, I went and talked to her and said, ‘Are you sure you wanna do this? I only wanna do it with you. It’s an election year. This would be great,'” recalled O’Donnell. “Now, I have known her for many, many years and always looked up to her. So, I was very surprised at what went down.”

“I thought we were going to be like, you know, Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan, passing the ball back. Throwing the layups up,” she continued. “I didn’t think there would be any kind of competition. I don’t have a real competitive side with other women. I wanna support other women. I wanna try to help other women. So, it got off to the wrong foot.” O’Donnell explained that on one of her first days back, the camera men attempted to throw the show to commercial, but Goldberg continued talking. “There was, like, a little brief period where she took a breath or something and I said, ‘Listen, we’ll get to that right after this Whoop, we’ll be right back’ and she was not having it,” she told Cohen.

O’Donnell added that the moment “was not at all meant as an insult or to take something from her,” but it didn’t seem to matter. “Who cares who gets to say, ‘We’re going to break,’ right?” asked O’Donnell. “It was really painful to me to feel how much she didn’t like me.”

Listen to Rosie O’Donnell and Andy Cohen discuss her relationship with Whoopi Goldberg in the clip above.

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