Rosie O’Donnell is set to begin a week-long guest hosting stint on Jimmy Kimmel Live!
However, she shared in a new interview that she has never actually met the host himself in person.
O’Donnell, 64, told Variety that the offer to guest host Kimmel’s eponymous ABC talk show “came out of the blue.”
“We’ve never spoken on the phone; we’ve texted a few times,” she told the publication. “Howard Stern tried to make amends with us, so we’ve been at the same parties a few times and I would talk to his wife. But Jimmy was never a fan of mine, and it was kind of an adversarial relationship — not that I was fighting back, but I was like, ‘OK, one of the bro guys…’”
The former The View host said the nature of her relationship with Kimmel took a turn when she reached out to the comedian following the death of his uncle, former NYPD officer Frank Potenza.
“When everything happened with his uncle dying, I wrote him and he wrote back. So, when my publicist called and said, ‘Do you want to guest-host ‘Kimmel’ for a week?’ I said, ‘I haven’t ever even been a guest!’ And then I said, ‘If you’re positive that that’s an actual offer and he wants me to do it, then I most certainly will,’” O’Donnell said.
“I was surprised, to tell you the truth, and very thankful,” she added.
O’Donnell also added that she admires Kimmel and supports “what he’s doing with the First Amendment, and our ability as entertainers and citizens to speak out against our government that’s enshrined in the Founding Fathers’ writings about our government, so I think he’s fantastic.”
Kimmel and O’Donnell are two of Donald Trump’s most vocal critics and are known for their long-running feuds with the president.
In announcing his list of guest hosts before taking time away, Kimmel told his audience in June: “And as a special treat for our commander in chief, I asked one of his all-time favorites, Rosie O’Donnell, to be here to keep the hits coming.
“You’re welcome, and all I ask in return, Mr. President, is that you don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.”
Kimmel is slated to return September 8.
O’Donnell’s bitter feud with Trump stretches back to 2006, when she was a host on The View.
It reached new heights during Trump’s 2015 presidential campaign. When moderator Megyn Kelly challenged Trump during a Republican debate about derogatory comments he had made about women, Trump famously replied: “Only Rosie O’Donnell.”
Since then, the pair have frequently traded barbs over social media.
Most recently, O’Donnell and several other celebrities were featured in a spoof AI video Trump posted on Truth Social accusing them of suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
Speaking to The Guardian, O’Donnell responded by saying: “He’s quite ill – and getting worse daily. The 25th Amendment exists for exactly this reason. Remove. Impeach. Convict.”
