Rosie O’Donnell quickly put the kibosh on a report that she’s angling to replace Jimmy Kimmel, while allowing that a return to daytime TV could be “interesting.”
O’Donnell, who’s set to fill in for a vacationing Kimmel in mid-August, took to Instagram Monday, posting an email exchange with a reporter from The Globe in which she responded to a request for comment on the tabloid’s claim that she’d be willing to go behind Kimmel’s back to secure a role as his permanent replacement.
“Ha funny – and completely untrue,” O’Donnell responded to the reporter. “I’m not interested in doing late night,” she continued. “Daytime however would be interesting.”
O’Donnell, of course, is no stranger to daytime television. The Rosie O’Donnell Show aired from 1996 to 2002, and she had two stints on The View, beginning in 2006 and 2014. The last several months have seen a serious thinning of the herd in daytime talk, with four long-running shows ending their runs: The Kelly Clarkson Show, Sherri, Karamo, and The Steve Wilkos Show. O’Donnell may see that as an opportunity.
As for why she’d respond to a tabloid report in the first place, past experience may have led her to want to set the record straight sooner rather than later.
Kimmel’s future at ABC beyond his current contract, which expires in May 2027, remains uncertain—even as he draws the highest ratings of his more than two-decade run.
O’Donnell has said her relationship with David Letterman‘s Late Show team was frayed under somewhat similar circumstances. After Letterman underwent emergency quintuple bypass surgery in January 2000, O’Donnell reached out to then-CBS president Les Moonves, offering to fill in for Letterman during his recuperation.
By her account, Letterman’s team interpreted the outreach as an attempt to capitalize on his illness.
“Please don’t even think this is something I’m eager to do,” O’Donnell said at the time, insisting she only wanted to “pitch in and help out.”
The Letterman show did eventually bring in guest hosts during that period, but O’Donnell was not among them. Five years later, she said she had turned down an invitation to appear on the show, recalling that one of Letterman’s producers had told her amid the earlier flap that she was “not a friend to the show.”
O’Donnell did eventually return to Letterman’s Late Show, making two guest appearances—in 2006 and 2014.
She is scheduled to guest-host Jimmy Kimmel Live! for the week beginning August 17. Kimmel announced her addition to the show’s summer lineup in June, describing it as “a special treat for our commander in chief” and promising that one of Donald Trump’s longest-running celebrity antagonists would be there “to keep the hits coming.”
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