Rosie O'Donnell, 64, announced this week that she will return to The View for its upcoming 30th anniversary special, after twice leaving the daytime talk show following on-air clashes with her co-hosts.
Speaking on the podcast The Tangle, O'Donnell said: 'I will go on the 30th anniversary next year and be on in whatever way they want me, just as a guest.' She added, 'They're bringing back all the hosts, I think, for the 30th season.'
'And I'm pretty proud of that show, what it's become and how it really speaks to the people and to politics, and that was not the case when I first joined,' she said.
A representative for O'Donnell declined the Daily Mail's request for further comment.
Two turbulent stints as host
O'Donnell hosted The View twice, first from 2006 to 2007 and then again from 2014 to 2015, leaving after a single season each time. During both tenures she developed a reputation for clashing with fellow panelists Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Whoopi Goldberg.
O'Donnell first joined the show as a replacement for its moderator, Meredith Vieira, and instantly became a headline-grabbing presence. In a departure from Vieira's conciliatory geniality, she frequently plunged into fiery arguments on air, particularly with Hasselbeck, whose position as the show's stock conservative put her at odds with the liberal O'Donnell.
Exit over an Iraq War clash with Hasselbeck
It emerged in 2007 that O'Donnell's contract negotiations with ABC had collapsed and that she was exiting the show after a single season. She ultimately left three weeks earlier than planned following a particularly rancorous on-air scrap with Hasselbeck over the Iraq War.
O'Donnell said she was no longer willing to engage in squabbles with Hasselbeck on The View, saying: '"Rosie - big, fat, lesbian, loud Rosie - attacks innocent, pure, Christian Elisabeth," and I'm not doing it for the rest of the - I'm not doing it!'
The split-screen confrontation grew so bitter that their co-host Joy Behar eventually erupted, asking: 'Is there no commercial in this show? What are we, on PBS?'
Tension with Whoopi Goldberg
When O'Donnell returned to The View in 2014, rumors began circulating of a feud between her and Goldberg. In her podcast interview, O'Donnell confessed that she 'had a sort of a tense time with Whoopi,' while referring to Goldberg as 'somebody I admire.'
O'Donnell said she had 'expected that we would be like Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan, passing the ball back and forth and then shooting and leading the team to victory. But that's not exactly what happened.'
Trying to trace the source of the friction, she said: 'Maybe she felt encroached upon in some way, and I was never trying to encroach. I was just doing it the way that I knew how to do it and it didn't go so well.'
According to O'Donnell, Goldberg took against her after she 'made the mistake of throwing to a commercial when she was still talking.'
Guest hosting Kimmel and life in Ireland
O'Donnell moved to Ireland to avoid living under a second Trump presidency, but will be back on American television this month as part of a rotating stable of guest hosts filling in for Jimmy Kimmel on Jimmy Kimmel Live! while its star takes a summer holiday.
A barely noticeable facelift
Her reentry to American television follows a facelift she had in January that made headlines for being scarcely perceptible. O'Donnell had initially agonized over the decision to have the 'shameful' procedure, which she regarded as a 'betrayal of feminism.'
She said she paid more than 'I have ever paid for a car,' only to emerge from surgery and realize nobody noticed the difference. O'Donnell rationalized the result as 'the best possible outcome' when she went public about the operation in rambling free verse on her Substack.
