Giving Rosie O’Donnell her own late-night show would truly make America great—and gay!—again
The campaign for Rosie's full-time return to our TV screens starts now!
Mark
If you’re feeling a little blue this week, don’t worry, that’s normal: We’re all coming down from the high of having Rosie O’Donnell on our TV screens every night!
From August 17 – 20, the iconic actress & comedian guest-hosted Jimmy Kimmel Live! while Kimmel himself was on summer vacation, bringing that classic Rosie magic to late-night television, and we may never be the same.
How about we take this to the next level?
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As was to be expected, O’Donnell’s stint devoted ample time to mocking our Commander-In-Thief—after all, Tr*mp’s long had a strange obsession with the queer star and has attempted to label her Public Enemy No. 1. “Couldn’t have done it without you, sweetie,” she joked in one of her monologues. “You brought me back, just like you did with fascism and the measles.”
But the real thrill of these four episodes was how warm & joyful they felt, often ignoring so-called “Mango Mussolini” all-together in favor of playful humor, personal anecdotes, and a palpable sense of connection with each of her guests.
As O’Donnell noted, it’s been nearly 30 years since she’s solo-hosted a TV show, but she hasn’t missed a beat, confidently recapturing the feeling of her beloved The Rosie O’Donnell Show from the ’90s with ease.
Take, for example, her interview with Cats: The Jellicle Ball star Sydney James Harcourt, which recalled her previous show’s tendency to spotlight Broadway talent and O’Donnell’s penchant for openly (and innocently) crushing on her guests. The pair’s breezy banter was oozing with charm, reminding us that she has a gift for putting her interviewees—and, in turn, the audience at home—at ease.
In fact, it was during their conversation that it really hit us: Wait, why isn’t Rosie O’Donnell just doing this all the time? And we were far from the only ones to think that!
Throughout the week, fans took to social media to share how much they’d missed having O’Donnell regularly on TV, floating the idea that she should take over permanently or maybe even get a new show all her own Just check out the comments section on our own post:
Then, on Monday, the unofficial campaign got its biggest boost when Variety‘s Daniel D’Addario wrote a piece arguing why she deserved to be the new queen of late-night, especially at a time when the classic TV format is in desperate need of a shake-up:
“A form of TV that seems close to dying could use a jolt of energy, and O’Donnell, with her built-in fanbase and her ability to connect with, and provoke, audiences, might just be late night’s future,” D’Addario writes.
As he notes, it’s been decades since Joan Rivers “tried to break into the late-night boys’ club,” and other female-fronted talk shows (like A Little Late With Lilly Singh & the Taylor Tomlinson-led After Midnight reboot) have felt too boxed in by the networks, so it’d be groundbreaking for a woman as well known as O’Donnell to take the reins of a “flagship” late-night series, which would surely “[draw] in an underserved audience of women and gay men and [generate] reams of press.”
“Queen Of Queer Media” Tracy Gilchrist agrees, writing in her Holding Space Substack that O’Donnell’s guest-hosting stint was “a masterclass in humor, grace, and confronting her bully,” not to mention a much needed sign of hope during a moment that feels especially bleak. “Rosie was joyfully herself,” the journalist adds, “calling out her queerness from the desk of a network talk show at a time when LGBTQ+ people are increasingly erased, silenced, and scapegoated.”
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Rosie O’Donnell on coming out: “It’s not an easy life. But it’s a true life”
Rosie has a way of putting the queer experience isn’t perspective.
Hear that, Rosie? Not only do we want you back on our screens—we need you! But the question remains: Would she do it?
In an interview from earlier this summer on podcast The Tangle with Kyle Ridley, O’Donnell confirmed there have been discussions about returning to daytime TV with a show that she hopes would give audiences “an hour of peaceful joy”—although she wouldn’t want to launch it until after Tr*mp leaves office.
However, one has to wonder if the ecstatic response to her time on Kimmel might expedite the process, so to speak. After all, the numbers are there; it’s been reported that ratings for the O’Donnell-hosted episodes represented a summer high for the show, out-pacing viewership of all other celebrity guest hosts as well as other late-night competition last week like The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, in addition to racking up millions of social media views.
And, O’Donnell, for her part, seems to be receptive to the idea, sharing both the Variety & Holding Space pieces to her popular Instagram page. The outpouring of support in the comments alone has to be encouraging!
So, what do you say, Rosie?
There’s a late-night vacancy at CBS, though we highly doubt the network would back her after axing Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show due to what many believe was pressure from the Tr*mp administration. And it doesn’t seem like Fallon’s going anywhere any time soon. Of course, Kimmel has frequently teased his time with ABC may be coming to an end, so maybe they’ll count this last week as O’Donnell’s test run and proof that she’s more than up to the task?
Or, better yet, let’s just give her a brand-new show of her very own, one she can shape however she wants, Koosh Balls and all. And, preferably, we get it up & running sooner rather than later. Because if there’s one thing that’s clear, it’s that we need Rosie O’Donnell back on our screens now more than ever.
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People are sharing amazing stories about their experiences with Rosie O’Donnell
One man recalls running into Rosie O’Donnell in the audience of a Celine Dion show in Las Vegas.
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