Rosie O'Donnell on Show Cancellation: I Thought It Would Be Easy
Rosie O'Donnell
Rosie O'Donnell says she has no hard feelings toward OWN for canceling The Rosie Show because it was a "fair" fate for a show she wrongfully presumed would be easy to do.
OWN axes The Rosie Show
"It was fair," O'Donnell said in a video posted on YouTube on Monday. "Listen, Oprah [Winfrey] gave me an amazing shot at doing this. She really did. She put me back on TV. She believed in me. I didn't even know if I could do it again, truthfully. And then she said, 'I think you can,' and then I said, 'I think I can too.' And off I came here to Chicago with the best of intentions, trying — really — what I thought would be trying kind of easy for me, but it wasn't really that easy."
OWN canceled the fledgling talk show on Friday after less than six months on the air. O'Donnell said that the show "started off the wrong way," in that it tried to recreate her syndicated talk show from the '90s. "You can't do that," she said. "There's a quote [from] Lewis Carroll: 'I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.' And that's what I sort of figured out."
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After she realized that during the Christmas break, O'Donnell said she revamped the show, turning it into a one-on-one interview without an audience, but it was too little too late.
"Here's the bottom line: It's a business. It didn't make financial sense to continue the show at the cost because of the amount of viewers," she said. "All I want to say is thanks to all the people who watched, thanks to Oprah. It's not about the things that occur in your life; it's about how you react to them. Oprah has treated me with nothing but dignity and respect from Day 1, and I thank her and Harpo and the staff."
Watch the video: