News

by Jacques Steinberg

Rosie O’Donnell, who raised both the profile and the ratings of “The View” this season by commandeering it as a bully pulpit for her opinions on the Iraq war, Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey and even her own cast mates, will leave the show in June after failing to reach a contract extension, she announced on the program yesterday morning.

“I have decided that we couldn’t come to terms with my deal with ABC, so next year I’m not going to be on ‘The View,’ ” Ms. O’Donnell said on the show just after it began broadcasting live at 11 a.m. She said, however, that she expected to return to the program as a guest host occasionally next year, including to preside over one-hour special episodes like those this year about autism and depression.

Ms. O’Donnell, whose contract with the program was only for this season, said that ABC had wanted her to sign a three-year extension, while she had wanted to commit only to a year. An ABC executive who was directly apprised of the negotiations but who was not authorized to discuss them confirmed Ms. O’Donnell’s account, but said that there had also been wide differences between the salary she was seeking and what the network was willing to pay.

What was not immediately clear was whether the public feuds Ms. O’Donnell engaged in from her seat on “The View” — most famously with Mr. Trump — played any role in her departure. On Tuesday, for example, The New York Post described in its gossip column “Page Six” how Ms. O’Donnell’s crude taunts about Mr. Trump in a speech this week at an annual luncheon honoring women in the media had prompted Barbara Walters, a host and co-owner of “The View,” to shield her face in her hands on the dais.

This winter, the insults hurled between Mr. Trump and Ms. O’Donnell had ultimately, and uncharacteristically, drawn in Ms. Walters, who was prompted to label him a “poor, pathetic man” on “The View” after he asserted that Ms. Walters had privately told him she regretted the hiring of Ms. O’Donnell.

Still, Ms. Walters, who shares a publicist with Ms. O’Donnell, had acknowledged in an interview last fall that she had had her eyes wide open when she invited Ms. O’Donnell to join the cast. In effect, Ms. Walters got what she paid for: a resurgence in attention and ratings for a show that had been at risk of lurching toward irrelevance on the eve of this, its 10th season.

Indeed, Ms. Walters, like ABC, had been pleased with the spike in the show’s viewership, which was widely credited to Ms. O’Donnell. The 3.5 million people who, on average, have watched the show each morning this season, according to Nielsen Media Research estimates, represent an increase of 17 percent over last season at this point.

In losing Ms. O’Donnell, Ms. Walters and Bill Geddie, her co-executive producer, are now in the market for two new hosts — they have yet to replace Star Jones, who was effectively fired last year — to join Ms. Walters, Joy Behar and Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

On Wednesday’s program, Ms. Walters, who sat immediately to Ms. O’Donnell’s left at the show’s glass table, alluded to Ms. O’Donnell’s tempestuous tenure on the show by saying, “We have had, to say the least, an interesting year.” She added that the experience of having Ms. O’Donnell aboard had been “exciting, fun-filled and provocative.”

Still, Ms. Walters, who splits ownership of “The View” with ABC, nonetheless sought to distance herself from Ms. O’Donnell’s departure, telling the audience and viewers: “I would like to make one thing perfectly clear: I do not participate in the negotiations for Rosie. It’s ABC Daytime.”

“It was between your representative and ABC Daytime,” Ms. Walters reiterated, turning toward Ms. O’Donnell. “This is not my doing or my choice.”

Ms. Walters had used similar language in an interview nearly a year ago in seeking to keep herself at arm’s length from what she characterized as ABC’s decision not to renew the contract of Ms. Jones.

Cyndi Berger, the publicist who has long represented both Ms. Walters and Ms. O’Donnell, said yesterday that neither was available for an interview; Brian Frons, president of ABC’s daytime division, also declined through a spokeswoman to be interviewed.

Mr. Trump — who, in an interview in January called Ms. O’Donnell “a bully,” “not smart,” “crude,” “disgusting,” “a slob” and “an animal” — had plenty more to say yesterday. He said over the phone from Los Angeles that he was largely responsible for setting in motion the events leading to Ms. O’Donnell’s departure. He contended that “the straw that broke the camel’s back” was Ms. O’Donnell’s performance at the Waldorf-Astoria luncheon on Monday, where she was said to have grabbed her crotch when uttering Mr. Trump’s name and to have invited him to perform a sex act on her; also attending were Ms. Walters, Meredith Vieira, Cindy Adams and Rupert Murdoch.

“I think I exposed her for what she is,” Mr. Trump said. “I told you she was going to self-destruct.”

Mr. Trump, who stoked his feud with Ms. O’Donnell in the days leading up to the sixth-season premiere of his NBC show, “The Apprentice,” said he was not without some sadness about her leaving.

“You know, she went to my wedding,” he said. After being gently reminded that he has had three, he was more specific: “The second one.”

Mr. Trump, though, was hardly alone in celebrating Ms. O’Donnell’s exit. The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund had earlier expressed its objections to Ms. O’Donnell’s repeated use of the phrase “ching chong” in an imitation of Asian speech on a broadcast of “The View” in December.

In a statement yesterday, the group said it had been given an opportunity to voice those concerns directly at a meeting last month with executives of ABC Television, a unit of the Walt Disney Company. “We believe that the Disney-ABC Television Group made the right decision in refusing to renew Rosie O’Donnell’s contract on ‘The View,’ ” the group’s executive director, Margaret Fung, said in the statement.

Similarly, William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, said in an interview yesterday that members of his organization had sent hundreds of negative e-mail messages and letters to ABC and Disney over comments made by Ms. O’Donnell in recent months, including those the group categorized as belittling celibacy and the Eucharist.

“She’s offended a lot of people,” Mr. Donohue said. “She’s a train wreck.”

Ms. O’Donnell encouraged viewers to seek her out on her blog, at www.rosie.com, after she leaves “The View.”

“That’s showbiz,” Ms. O’Donnell said of her looming departure. “But it’s not sad.”

In a talk with the studio audience after the show finished taping, she may have foreshadowed her next act. Ms. O’Donnell, who has starred on Broadway in “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Grease” and “Seussical,” indicated that she was interested in joining the revival of “Les Misérables.”

Marc Thibodeau, a spokesman for the production, said Ms. O’Donnell had been approached about playing the coarse hostess Madame Thenardier, but that nothing had been set.

“We think she would make a terrific Madame Thenardier and would love to have her join the show at some point in the future,” he said. He added, though, that the actress currently playing the role only joined the production on Tuesday night.

Campbell Robertson contributed reporting to this article.

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/arts/television/26rosi.html