Rosie O’Donnell says Ellen DeGeneres once ‘hurt her feelings’: ‘I never really got over it’

‘That’s what happened and it hurt my feelings like a baby,’ comedian said

Rosie O’Donnell has explained why she was never really friends with Ellen DeGeneres after the presenter “hurt her feelings”.

DeGeneres famously appeared on The Rosie O’Donnell Show in 1996, where she alluded to rumours that she was a lesbian before publicly coming out on Ellen.

Appearing on Watch What Happens Live on Thursday (15 September), host Andy Cohen asked O’Donnell why she was never asked to appear on The Ellen DeGeneres Show herself.

“We had a little bit of a weird thing, after my show went off the air and hers was coming on the air,” O’Donnell explained.

“Larry King was on with Ellen and he said, ‘What ever happened to Rosie O’Donnell? Her show went down the tubes! She came out as a lesbian and disappeared!’”

She continued: “And Ellen said, and I’m quoting, ‘I don’t know Rosie. We’re not friends.’”

O’Donnell said that she was in bed with her ex-wife Kelli Carpenter at the time, recalling: “I said ‘Did I just hear that? Or was that a hallucination, auditory voice in my– no. That’s what happened and it hurt my feelings like a baby.”

She added: “I never really got over it.”

However, O’Donnell said that she now wished DeGeneres “all good things in her life and that she should be well”.