Both Rosie O’Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres have shocked their fans over the past few months by fleeing America and moving to the United Kingdom.
Each of these American comedians left the country after the results of the November presidential election came in. O’Donnell has since settled in Ireland, while DeGeneres has made England her new home.
Since O’Donnell, 63, and DeGeneres, 67, are both comedians of a similar age who clearly have similar ways of thinking about life, you would think that the two are close friends. However, that could not be further from the truth. Instead, the two of them have been bitter rivals for decades.
Now, new reports are coming in indicating that O’Donnell and DeGeneres’ respective moves to the U.K. have done nothing to bond them together. In fact, O’Donnell has just launched a plan to seemingly stick it to DeGeneres and hit her right where it hurts.
O’Donnell’s Plan To Target DeGeneres
Sources are saying that O’Donnell has finalized a deal to do her first comedy special overseas. Her specific goal is to outshine DeGeneres. Indeed, O’Donnell reportedly wants to ensure that she’s the top American female comedian living in the U.K., not DeGeneres.
“Rosie has fully written and test-performed a new hour-long stand-up set, and she’s going to put it to film in the coming months,” an insider told In Touch Weekly. “I guess the headline is that it’s a lot like Ellen’s special, except it’s funny!”
“Rosie still has a swagger and still has real comedy chops, and thankfully, in her new material she doesn’t come across as bitter or defensive,” the source continued. “She’s just trying to make people laugh and she’s doing it by being herself.”
The insider went on to say that O’Donnell “doesn’t have a streaming deal for this material just yet” because she’s “just starting that step of the process.”
However the source also said that O’Donnell’s “voice is needed in stand-up, and unlike Ellen, she’s going to get a warm welcome from fans. The bottom line is Rosie has more friends than Ellen does, and people are really rooting for Rosie as she finally gets back to her standup roots!”
O’Donnell has announced that her first show in Dublin Ireland will take place on July 27. Needless to say, DeGeneres likely isn’t happy about this one!
Related: Rosie O’Donnell Makes Major Announcement After Fleeing America To Move To Ireland
O’Donnell’s Feud With DeGeneres
O’Donnell has long been open about her feud with DeGeneres. In 2023, O’Donnell told The Hollywood Reporter that she and DeGeneres were actually once close friends.
“It was a good relationship. We were friends. We supported each other,” she recalled. “She came out first on my show [The Rosie O’Donnell Show], remember? She came on and my show was live.”
While they went their “separate ways” when their comedy careers took them different places, O’Donnell claimed that they still remained friends. That all changed when DeGeneres made some hurtful comments about O’Donnell while being interviewed by Larry King in 2004.
“Larry King said, ‘Whatever happened to Rosie O’Donnell’s show? She went down the tubes as soon as she came out,'” O’Donnell recounted. “And the quote that Ellen said was, ‘I don’t know Rosie. We’re not friends.’ I was watching TV in bed with my wife going, ‘Did she just say that?’”
“It would never occur to me to say, ‘I don’t know her,’ about somebody whose babies I held when they were born,” she added. “It wouldn’t be in my lexicon of choices to ever say.”
Watch O’Donnell talk more about this in the video below.
O’Donnell Shocked That DeGeneres Also Fled America
Though DeGeneres and O’Donnell each just fled America for the U.K., it seems that their moves were not coordinated at all. In fact, O’Donnell has since expressed her shock that DeGeneres also fled America.
“I’ve never really known Ellen to say anything political in her life, so I was surprised to read that she left because of President Trump. Like, that shocked me, actually,” O’Donnell told US Weekly two months ago. “I’ve been a political person my whole life, not better or worse, it’s just a different way to be in the world.”
“I was very clear about the reason why I was leaving, and I don’t think it came as a surprise to anyone,” she stated.
Full Story: Rosie O’Donnell Admits She Was Stunned When Ellen DeGeneres Also Fled America For The UK – ‘That Shocked Me’
O’Donnell went on to admit that she’s not close to DeGeneres.
“We’re not really in each other’s worlds, and it’s been kind of awkward but you know what?” she continued. “I wish her the best. I wish that she has peace and love in her life and that she is OK.”
In this interview, O’Donnell would only further elude to her feud with DeGeneres by saying, “We’re just very different people. We have had some stuff in the past that we never resolved.”
Clearly, there’s no love lost between O’Donnell and DeGeneres. In the end, they’re both the United Kingdom’s problem now. Only time will tell if there’s room in the U.K. longterm for the two of them!
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