Rosie on Why Her OWN Show Got Cancelled
Rosie O'Donnell calls the cancellation of her show on Oprah's OWN network "fair" and says the venture turned out to be a lot harder than she initially thought.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter about last week's announcement that OWN was pulling the plug on The Rosie Show, O'Donnell said Oprah made the right decision amid sagging ratings. "It was fair. Listen: Oprah gave me an amazing shot at doing this. She really did. She put me back on TV. She believed in me. I didn't even know if I could do it again."
"And off I came here to Chicago, with the best of intentions, trying, really, to do ... what I thought would be kind of easy for me," O'Donnell told THR. "But it wasn't really that easy. We sort of started off the wrong way. We were kind of trying to do a little bit of what we had done 15 years ago, and you can't do it."
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The format had been altered in recent months -- including the addition of more one-on-one interviews -- in a bid to breath new life into The Rosie Show, but O'Donnell said it was too late and "by that time we had lost a lot of momentum." She said she understands the cancellation was the right business decision for Oprah and OWN to make because the show just didn't attract enough viewers.
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"Oprah has treated me with nothing but respect and with dignity from day one. ... It's not a nightmare -- it's a good thing," she added.