Rosie O’Donnell says she would return to The View as a guest co-host — but the invitation has never come. Speaking on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live this week, the comedian and actress said she caught Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s recent guest appearance on the ABC daytime program and put herself forward for the same treatment. “I would be up to guest host, but they haven’t asked me,” O’Donnell told host Andy Cohen.
The remark landed as a dry acknowledgment of a pointed omission: The View has cycled through multiple former panelists this season, including Hasselbeck and Abby Huntsman, while O’Donnell — one of the most consequential and controversial co-hosts in the show’s history — has received no call.
The exchange gave O’Donnell an opening to revisit the grievance she has been airing with increasing candor: the infamous May 2007 split-screen fight with Hasselbeck that ended her first stint on the show. When Cohen asked whether she still resented the director’s decision to cut to a divided frame, her answer was immediate. “Yah, I’m still annoyed. Believe me, a mommy knows how to hold a grudge.”
That on-air confrontation — a ten-minute argument over American military policy in Iraq and questions about O’Donnell’s patriotism — remains the single most discussed moment in The View’s nearly three-decade run. O’Donnell left two days after the broadcast, asking to be released from her contract. She returned to the panel in 2014 as part of a cast overhaul alongside Whoopi Goldberg, Nicolle Wallace, and Rosie Perez, but left again after five months, citing health reasons.
The feud has refused to stay historical. Last year O’Donnell publicly alleged that late producer Bill Geddie had orchestrated the split screen in advance, calling the entire episode “a setup.” Hasselbeck responded tearfully on Instagram, accusing O’Donnell of lying and demanding she stop. O’Donnell’s response on Watch What Happens Live — taking a thinly veiled swipe at Hasselbeck’s politics while simultaneously expressing willingness to sit beside her again — suggests the standoff has calcified into something neither woman is finished with.
O’Donnell, who relocated to Ireland earlier this year citing the political climate under President Trump’s second term, is also set to guest host Jimmy Kimmel Live! this summer.
