Celebrity Detox

by Rosie O'Donnell

  “Monthly, you know. It happens all the time. I get the balance, and that day write out checks, and you say I don’t have it? Impossible. I have the receipt.”

  The man, listening to this, was stunned. He didn’t move. He didn’t laugh. He just stared at me. After a moment he asked how old I was. Twenty two, I told him, and I had two Visa cards and I was a professional stand-up comic; I had been on Star Search; in clubs; I was not someone who could have their bank messing up like this, month after month.

  The man asked me to go over it again, my system, how I knew the mistake was not mine, the date on my balance receipt. I went slowly because he was having trouble understanding, which seriously concerned me, seeing as he was a bank employee. When I was done he lifted up my blank checkbook, with absolutely no notation of deposits or withdrawals, and flipped through it. The dry pages rustled. He took the loose-leaf paper with the ragged receipt stapled to it and walked into the belly of the bank.

  “Heads are going to roll,” I thought. “Someone is in deep trouble.” After ten minutes, he came back out. “Okay Rosie,” he said. “Listen, I’m giving you free unlimited checking, including a no bounce fee. You will no longer be charged anything concerning your checking account, as long as you agree to come to one training course on handling you account.”

  “Fair deal,” I thought. I’d get to hold forth in the course about my superior banking methods, and in return, I’d get a no bounce fee.

  So many people in my life have been nice to me. I see it clearly now.

  The course was on a Sunday, at twelve noon. Everyone there was a Spanish speaker, except me. The teacher asked each of us how we recorded our transactions. Immediately I raised my hand and said, “I just go to the ATM and see my balance, and then write checks for less than that amount.”

  The teacher started to laugh, really laugh, and then so did the students, who felt the funniness without understanding a word. I had cracked everyone up, and I wasn’t even trying.

  “That’s a good one,” the teacher said. “You should be a comedienne.”

  Well, I was becoming a comedienne, and the truth is, my act was getting better and better even if my banking skills were not. I could get an audience going. I was out there on my own. My own boss. I learned to write my own lines, and then I learned something else: not to write them, to just stand on a stage and let things float to me, sudden sayings, riffs and swerves, which is the best art and the best humor: unplanned.

  I didn’t need to know a lot about Bill Geddie, or any boss really, to know that the whole point of management is planning. Bosses plan their company, their strategy, their time, their talk. At heart, I’m an improviser, not a planner. That’s why I knew it would be a challenge to have any kind of boss, Bill Geddie or otherwise, but I knew I would try. I believed we both would. Despite the fact that he is a conservative and I am not, he also values human rights, so I knew there was some common core between us. At least I hoped so. Because this is what it’s all about: a common core.

  In the pre-show meetings that summer I felt the tensions of what was to come. These tensions are difficult to pinpoint in fact, but in my body they were not. Icy looks? Clenched fists? Tart tongues? No, not really, not then, certainly, when we were all trying our best to make it work. It was hot that summer, and I seemed to always sweat, because my body knew it needed to feel fear. I am a fat, loud, say-it-like-it-is-far-left-liberal while Barbara is a petite, poised, cautious, polite hostess. Why did we think the combination could work? Why did I think the combination could work? Simple. I wanted her to like me. Maybe even love me. Because no matter how famous I am, a part of me is always on the outside, too heavy, too hot, too damn much, at least for myself. Say it like it is, Ro. Okay. But God, it can be hard to hear.

  I think I sensed what later became apparent, what later the media jumped all over: how upsetting I could be to Barbara, because I don’t like scripts, or pretense. Much later on, weeks later, months later, I remember reading a newspaper report: “Walters was white” it said. The journalist wrote that the normally perceptive Rosie O’Donnell went on and on about money when, in fact, Walters does not like to discuss these things.

  I sensed there were serious stylistic differences between me and the rest of The View right from the start. They were as restrained and circumspect as I am garrulous and on edge. And then there’s this. For six years I had my own show, ran things my own way, and these things reflected my beliefs at every level. My bottom line belief when it comes to almost anything is authenticity. If you are organic in your approach, you can be assured that good things will grow. On my show, I strove to say what was true for me regardless of its impact on advertisers or even the audience. When I said I loved Tickle Me Elmo, it was because I did, not because the company had some financial stock in that particular slice of airtime. It has always been of absolute importance to me to speak my mind, for better or for worse. Because I don’t actually have a choice. It’s my mind. It’s not a car I can trade in for something slicker, or smoother, or sweeter. It’s all I have to offer.

  In the beginning, though, I had so much hope, so many ideas for the show. One thing I wanted right off the bat: the set changed. I wanted gifts for the audience. My belief is that the audience should feel welcomed, special; they are your guests. When you welcome them onto the set you are, in a very real sense, welcoming them into your living room, your home away from home, and they should be treated to creature comforts. The audience should never have to wait outside in the rain for a seat in the show. They should never feel thirsty; they should have a place to put their coats, rest their feet, sit softly. These things are important to me; they reflect the real appreciation I feel for the people who take the time to hear me, crass, crap or cream, no matter. I like to give the audience gift bags, even, and we finally did that on The View; we finally started giving them big red bags inside of which were small simple things, but the message was big. We care.

  I started out, in the preseason meetings and then on the show itself, with so many ideas and ideals and yet, no matter how much excitement I felt, it always sat side by side with my misgivings. I could not escape the sense, impossible to pinpoint but palpably real in the air, that while I was hugely welcomed as a co-host, I was also hugely threatening. I was too big, and that’s true. I am. Then again, maybe I’m giving myself more credit than I deserve. Maybe I was more of an irritant than anything else. Or maybe my ideas were too cumbersome for them, and kept cluttering what had been, before my loud-mouth arrival, something simple and clear. I would suggest something and my ideas didn’t seem to get the reception I’d hoped for, or maybe that was just my perception; no, it wasn’t. Who has not had the classic dream of swimming against a current, or screaming only to see the sound shred to silence in huge winds, or this dream, my dream: trying to dial the phone, but not being able to move my fingers so there is, and cannot ever be, the satisfying click of connection. Often, at The View, or in the months before the show started, I felt like I was on a turnpike and each time I picked up some speed I’d get stopped at a toll booth, and inside there was a bored person holding out his hand in a latex glove. Pay to proceed, please. It was exhausting.

  I wasn’t used to this. My own show was syndicated, so I’d operated outside the demands of any particular network. The whole time I did my show I had only one person to talk to, Jim Paratore, the tall guy with the shiny shoes. I had this one go-to guy who knew me as I knew him, the communication clean. In addition, when I started my show I was not nearly as famous as I am today, so I was able to just have a cheeseburger with Jim and say, “Dude, this is how I do it, okay? I’m gonna try to give a hundred percent and we’re both gonna make a lot of money and have a good show. And this is how I see it.” Jim let me do everything, from the opening credits design, to how the set should look, to what color it should be; he let me do every single thing. I had total creative control.

  When I remember the summer before the start of The View it seems the season was unusually hot. Ne
w York City is never a great place in July or August, but those preseason months seemed especially oppressive to me, the heat draped over the city, muffling the skyscrapers, melting the tar so it oozed and stank in the streets. In Nyack, the roses bloomed for a brief period, flared pink and wine, and then the petals flaked off and scattered in the scorched grass. I smeared my kids with sunscreen as thick as mayonnaise but it never seemed thick enough, because the barrier filtering out the harmful rays had been so thinned from CO2 that we were all essentially roasting on the racks—that’s what it seemed to me. I was driven from Nyack into the city for these preseason meetings, and I always ran the brief distances between my front door and the cool air of the car, sprinted as though I were being chased by something fierce, and in fact I was.

  One of the biggest conflicts, right from the start, had to do with the IFB, a device too tiny for the huge significance it held for us all. The IFB is essentially a gadget that you shove in your ear and that is connected, wirelessly, to the control room. They are used regularly on many television shows, from newsrooms to talk shows—day or night. I find this amazing, disturbing. The general point of an IFB on any television show is that, as you are talking to the audience, the people in the control room can also talk to you, send you suggestions and updates, feed you your lines:

  MIRACLE HEALERS

  A SPECIAL DATELINE INVESTIGATION

  THE PREACHER HEALING THE ILL—

  WILLING WANTING TO BELIEVE

  INTO HIS EAR

  CANCER—LEFT LEG—ARLENE

  LOOK AT

  RIGHT

  THE TELEPROMPTERS SAYS

  ARE YOU ARLENE

  CANCER, IN THE LEG

  SHHHH

  THE RIGHT LEG

  HOLD

  COMMERCIAL BREAK

  60 SECONDS

  TIME IS RUNNING

  RUNNING

  RUNNING

  SAY IT

  ALL

  “I’m not wearing an IFB,” I said, almost right off the bat, because this was essential to me.

  I CAN’T

  I WON’T

  I NEVER HAVE

  I NEVER WILL

  NOT ON LIVE DAYTIME TV

  I AM NOT A NEWSCASTER

  I AM NOT A PUPPET

  NO

  The IFB is not a bad instrument per se. It has an important place in broadcasting—IFBs were essential, I’m sure they were useful when the Twin Towers were falling and more information was pouring in by the minute. But in general, I don’t believe it’s a good idea to multitask talk. And as far as I’m concerned, I already have too much incoming. I have always been able to hear people conversing in the green room. I have always been able to hear extraneous chitchat around me; I have always been able to hear the buzz the camera makes when it runs, and all this sound—it is unbelievably tiring.

  Barbara, I think, had a hard time with my IFB refusal. My guess is that to her, a former newscaster, not wearing an IFB is a very bad idea. “Nothing real can ever happen when you’re wearing it,” I explained. I don’t think she bought it.

  Feud Number 1: Kelly Ripa

  Kelly Ripa had Clay Aiken on her show. Now, Clay Aiken, he’s a young man, twenty-six maybe. He was a special ed teacher living with his mom before he became super famous. He’s one of the biggest recording stars in the last twenty-five years, a real American idol. The world loved him. I watched as fame swept him into the pipeline—I was rooting for him. Gay rumors swirled around him—was he? Is he? The fact is, the public doesn’t know what Clay Aiken thinks or feels or is because that’s how Clay Aiken wants it to be. And that is as it should be.

  So Clay Aiken went on Kelly Ripa’s show.

  What happened when he went on Kelly Ripa’s show? It was clear to me that she didn’t like him, for whatever reason. Some people do not click—they didn’t. He had his Claymates in the crowd, holding up signs and screaming for him, and he tried too hard—and she was having none of it. So during some inane segment he interrupted and he put his hand over her mouth as a joke, as if to say, “Let me get a word in, kid, pass the ball, share.”

  And she said, “No, no, no.” She spoke as though he were a child. And then she said, “I don’t know where that hand has been.”

  And she took a condescending sip of water while making eyes at the audience.

  “Low blow,” I thought.

  And Clay, he just crumpled up, like a little boy thinking he had done something wrong.

  So I said, on air the next day, that Kelly’s comment was homophobic, and she called in to the show, wanting to have it out with me on air. Which she did. They put her live on the phone. How dare I. I should know better. She has germaphobia. She likes gay people. I am irresponsible. Yes, well, okay. Got it!

  But I am just saying that the whole incident looked to me like a gay person who had just had the gay card played on them.

  That’s how I saw it.

  The Kelly Ripa Feud was about many things for me: fairness, trust, respect. Would the Kelly/Clay incident have gone any differently if I was wearing an IFB? I say “no”—some say “yes.”

  Barbara I’m sure thought the Kelly Ripa Feud would have been avoided had I been wearing my IFB. I don’t want to go through a long explanation of why that’s not so. It suffices to say that Barbara just doesn’t get it, my IFB hatred. She doesn’t have to get it. She doesn’t have to learn how to do improvisational comedy at seventy-eight or eighty-one or however old she is. She’s a broadcaster, and when you’re a broadcaster you use an IFB.

  “What’s it stand for?” someone asked me the other day. “IFB, what’s that stand for?”

  God, I don’t know. I didn’t know. I thought about it for a minute. And all I could come up with was this: Inter Fucking fearing Bureaucratic bullshit.

  This is, of course, just in my opinion.

  “Like dogs sniffing each other.” This is how my own producer, Janette Barber, describes the dynamics on the first day of the show. I can’t say I experienced it that way, but I can say there was, perhaps, an element of cautiousness to the whole encounter. These women, after all, had been doing this show for what—nine years now—doing it their way, day in and day out, and then one day in walks the new kid on the block but she’s not an ordinary new kid. She’s the kid who comes to school in a Mercedes, the kid who is prince of some small island—you get it.

  My intent was never to steal the show, my intent was to enhance it, but not all forms of help are experienced this way. These women had their own routines and ideas; I had mine. I’ve never done anything halfway. My own show won many Emmy Awards. I told Barbara The View would too. I am not sure she believed me. As for me, I don’t have to have the prize but I absolutely must have the desire to win it—to set the standard and then maybe even go beyond. Without that desire, your limbs shrivel and your soul gets small.

  A major conflict for me now, is how not to let my soul get small while doing mainstream television. Whether it’s my own show, or whether it’s a show I’m a guest on; whether it’s here or there or everywhere, mainstream television has its limits, which is one reason why I sometimes think I should leave it, break out, and go fully into cyberspace, where there’s a kind of radical freedom that frightens me as much as it appeals to me. On regular daytime TV, or nighttime too for that matter, the topics can lack heft. Girth. Weight. Who cares about Paris Hilton when what’s happening in the world is happening? The fact is, the rift between television and the real world is often just so large that it’s part of what drove me to quit in the first place. Here’s my image, how I would paint it if I could: a pink and white room. Makeup artists swooping rouge on cheekbones powdered pale with talc. Topics that are at best irrelevant, at worst obfuscating the real situation we are in. My idea of television is that it reveals, not conceals.

  My desire for fame was ignited in me when my mother got ill and died. I was ten years old then, and she died. She died first in our living room, lying on the couch in our house. She died later, and for good, in a hos
pital, alone, and she never ever came back home. Cancer. It grew in her body, cells swapping and dividing, but the details I have never learned; they were hidden from us. So much was hidden from us, for protection, for etiquette, the truth went up in coils of smoke from my nana’s cigarette, surrounding her, and finally erasing her, my mother. This is one reason why, I think, I long for the truth, and more. I want to broadcast what’s real, send it out in waves—silver sound waves lapping all over the globe.

  How to pick a pet for your children. How to make chocolate mud fudge sticks using Swiss Miss. Why Celebrity A hates Celebrity B. Why Celebrity B loves Celebrity A. What Celebrity C thinks of Celebrity A and B. Hot topics. Things that burn. Burns that scar the skin, peel away pink and underneath is new and too tender to touch. So much hurts here. Shhh. Don’t say this. Shhh.

  I found this just the other day—a fragment from an interview I gave, to whom I can’t recall, but they, the reporter I guess, must have sent me the transcript, and here it was, all of a sudden, in a file I can’t recall filing. Sometimes you see your face in the mirror and it seems shocking to you. So too, your voice on tape or worse, pasted onto the page, where it freezes in its own hysteria, but there’s some truth there, in the rambling:

  I’m gonna start with 9/11.

  Oh my God, 9/11 happens.

  I was at the makeup chair

  John McDaniel came in and he was crying

  and he was telling me that

  a plane had crashed into the Twin Towers,

  AND STOP I HEAR STOP

  and they know it’s true

  I can’t believe him and I stand up.

  Because if I stand up it’ll change the reality

  because I’m in control there, at 30 Rock

  I’m the boss,

  it’s the Rosie O’Donnell show and I am, Rosie O’Donnell.