Rosie O'Donnell has claimed that her infamous 2007 on-air clash with co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck on "The View" was orchestrated in advance by the show's producers.
Appearing on the "Ricki-Lee, Tim and Joel" podcast, O'Donnell said she now believes the heated exchange, which centered on the Iraq war and aired in May 2007, was deliberately staged. She pointed to the show's use of a split-screen format during the segment as evidence that it had been planned.
"Our producer is not an on-the-fly kind of guy, he wasn't mister like, 'Let's go to the split-screen.' That was prepared," O'Donnell said, referring to the show's late executive producer Bill Geddie, who died in 2023. "So, the whole thing, I think, was a setup."
The confrontation unfolded when O'Donnell accused Hasselbeck of failing to defend her against media claims that she had called U.S. troops "terrorists."
Hasselbeck responded sharply, saying, "You are an adult and I am certainly not going to be the person for you to explain your thoughts; they're your thoughts!"
Reflecting on the incident, O'Donnell said the experience left her feeling isolated. "It felt to me like I was on a basketball team of five women, and one of them kept tripping me on the way to the hoop," she said. "When they had the split screen?"
O'Donnell added that the fight was painful because she believed she and Hasselbeck had developed a real friendship before tensions emerged.
"I cannot believe that this woman, after all I did for her, because when I took that job, I made one commitment to myself, that I was not going to be her enemy, that I was going to meet her as a person," she said.
Recalling their earlier friendship, O'Donnell noted, "She came to my house; she was in my pool, she brought her little kid. I took her kid to Sesame Street Live; I took her to her first Broadway opening." She added, "I bent over backwards for this woman."
Both women eventually left "The View," O'Donnell first in 2007 and again in 2015, and Hasselbeck in 2013, but their feud continued publicly. When Hasselbeck returned as a guest co-host in 2022, O'Donnell said she watched the episode and was reminded "why I don't wanna watch it with her anymore."
She later posted on TikTok, criticizing Hasselbeck's use of Post-it notes during the broadcast.
"Her little Post-it notes … I don't know. Listen, it's strange," O'Donnell said. "Hope you're having a good day, and if you saw that yesterday, hope you recovered."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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