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Rosie O’Donnell is claiming that her on-air fight with Elisabeth Hasselbeck on The View was a “setup”
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Nearly two decades after O’Donnell and Hasselbeck butted heads on the ABC talk show, the comedian is claiming the incident was “prepared” by producers
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In May 2007, O’Donnell accused Hasselbeck of not defending her against media criticism from right-wing pundits after sharing her anti-war sentiments, which resulted in a 10-minute split-screen shoutfest
Rosie O’Donnell is revealing why she believes her on-air argument with Elisabeth Hasselbeck on The View was “a setup.”
During an interview on the Australian drive-time radio show Ricki-Lee, Tim Joel, the comedian, 63, revealed what she was thinking during the infamous fight in 2007.
“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 of Hasselbeck, 48. “And so, she came to my house, she swam in my pool, she brought her little kid, I took her kid to see Sesame Street Live, I took her to her first Broadway opening.”
“Like, I bent over backwards for this woman, and here she was comin’ at me on national TV about whether or not I was patriotic,” she added. “It felt to me like I was on a basketball team of five women and one of them kept tripping me on my way to the hoop.”
Lou Rocco/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty
Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Rosie O’Donnell on ‘The View’ on May 15, 2024.
When asked if she knew there would be a split screen between her and Hasselbeck, she responded, “Of course not!”
“And, you know, our producer [was] not an on-the-fly kind of guy,” he claimed, seemingly referring to the late View co-creator Bill Geddie, who died in July 2023. “He wasn’t, like, Mr. Let’s-go-to-a-split-screen. That was prepared. The whole thing, I think, was a setup.”
Representatives for The View declined to comment when reached by PEOPLE. Hasselbeck’s representatives did not immediately return PEOPLE’s request for comment.
The tension between conservative panelist Hasselbeck and outspoken O’Donnell came to a head in 2007.
In March of that year, O’Donnell caught heat for telling Hasselbeck, “Elisabeth, you are very young, and you are very wrong,” as they sparred over their differing feelings on the federal government’s access to citizens’ private telephone conversations.
O’Donnell later apologized, writing on her blog, “I love Elisabeth.”
A few weeks later, Hasselbeck returned the sentiment. “Politically, we’re rivals. That is clear. However, we are personally friends,” she told PEOPLE at the time. “We are on e-mail all day long with each other.”
However, the friction between the pair was seen again on the May 23, 2007, episode of the talk show.
O’Donnell accused Hasselbeck of not defending her against media criticism from right-wing pundits after sharing her anti-war sentiments. The 10-minute fight ended in a split-screen shoutfest.
The incident was the final straw in O’Donnell’s tumultuous eight-month stint on The View. Two days later, ABC announced that O’Donnell had asked to be released from her contract.
Yolanda Perez/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty
Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Rosie O’Donnell, Barbara Walters and Joy Behar for ‘The View’.
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A source told PEOPLE at the time that while O’Donnell was “definitely hurt by Elisabeth,” she was also mad at producers for going split-screen with the argument.
She later shared on her blog, “I never tried harder to be friends with someone than I did with [Elisabeth]. But I don’t think we ever got there, or anywhere close.”
Read the original article on People