Rosie Outlook for "The View"by Joal Ryan Apr 29, 2006, 10:30 AM PTRosie O'Donnell is the latest aftershock in the
Katie Couric earthquake.
With Couric
leaving NBC's Today to anchor CBS' Evening News and
Meredith Vieira leaving ABC's The View to replace Couric on Today, O'Donnell will leave her house to replace Vieira on The View.
"We were amazed when she said yes, and we were thrilled," said View maven
Barbara Walters in formally introducing O'Donnell as her show's new cohost at the
Daytime Emmys Friday, one day after word of the hire was first reported by Extra.
O'Donnell, who joined Walters on the Emmys stage, said she was honored to be asked.
"Thank God," O'Donnell quipped, "it was either that or Celebrity Fit Club."
In a posting on her blog early Saturday, O'Donnell wrote that Walters extended the View invite at a screening of "the hbo [sic] documentary," presumably, All Aboard! Rosie's Family Cruise, about her
cruise-ship trips for gay and lesbian families.
O'Donnell wrote that she said yes immediately to Walters' offer. She said Walters, a "feminist super hero," the first woman to coanchor a network nightly news program, belonged to her "4 u anything--file."
Blogged O'Donnell: "this one soared/b4 women were allowed."
O'Donnell will start her new job in September, the same month Couric and Vieira are to start their new jobs.
In scoring the gig, O'Donnell trumps chief rumored Vieira replacement
Patricia Heaton, late of
Everybody Loves Raymond.
There was no mention of O'Donnell on Friday morning's edition of the The View as the episode was pre-taped in order to allow the New York-based cast to fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys. And it was impossible to tell what the cast thought of O'Donnell at the Emmys as there were no reaction shots of the incumbent cohosts as the announcement was made on the telecast.
Barring a cast overhaul, O'Donnell's View counterpoints will be longtime coffee-klatch members Walters, Joy Behar,
Star Jones Reynolds and
Elizabeth Hasselbeck. O'Donnell and Reynolds go way back: Reynolds has lost 150 pounds in the last two years; O'Donnell has taken jabs at Reynolds for attributing her weight loss to "pilates [sic] and will power."
In "Star View," a March 29 free-form entry on her blog, O'Donnell wrote, "any fatty will tell u/it is nearly impossible to go/from where she was/to where she is/without medical intervention."
Reynolds, who recently confirmed a
breast lift, has denied having had gastric bypass surgery.
As for O'Donnell, she is a "fat 43-year-old menopausal ex-talk show host," according to her somewhat-inaccurate blog bio. (She's actually 44.) She is better known as a stand-up comic turned character actress (
Sleepless in Seattle,
A League of Their Own) turned daytime TV queen.
From 1996 to 2002, as the Broadway-boosting,
Tom Cruise-crushing star of The Rosie O'Donnell Show, O'Donnell won six Daytime Emmys as Outstanding Talk Host. In the late 1990s, Newsweek dubbed her the Queen of Nice for being a bright light in a murky sea of Sally Jessy Raphaels, Geraldos and Jerry Springers.
O'Donnell
vacated her desk job for the same reason she originally sought it out: To spend more time with family. She and partner Kelli Carpenter are parents to four children, one of whom Carpenter
gave birth to in 2002. (O'Donnell gave her version of Ellen DeGeneres' "Yup, I'm gay"
interview to ABC News in 2002.)
After her show ended, O'Donnell developed a reputation for being not nice. Much of her image was fueled by a
protracted legal battle over her
defunct women's magazine, Rosie.
In recent years, O'Donnell has maintained a low profile, even while producing a
Broadway flop, launching the cruise line, and venting about
David Letterman's show others on her blog.
In a round-about way, O'Donnell has President Bush, of whom she is a vocal critic, to thank for her View appointment. If the CBS Evening News hadn't been gotten into
hot water for its reporting on the President's National Guard years, anchor Dan Rather might not have been
pushed to resign, Couric might not have been
wooed by CBS to replace him, Vieira might not have been pursued by NBC to replace Couric, and O'Donnell might not have been asked by Walters to replace Vieira.
Funny but, Rosie owe the horrible man nothing!!!!!!!
