What did you expect when Rosie O’Donnell was announced as making her talk show return by substituting for Jimmy Kimmel as a guest host on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live?
You probably expected O’Donnell, after leaving Donald Trump’s America for Ireland in 2025 ago in search of “a more peaceful life,” to come out swinging at the president. You probably expected O’Donnell to come across like how conservatives paint her — angry and strident, going full blast at Trump’s second-term corruption allegations and policy blunders.
What viewers got instead (video below) during the first night of O’Donnell’s weeklong stint, was so much better and more interesting, a monologue that said a lot about her and even more about what’s lacking in typical late-night discourse.
First, O’Donnell showed she hasn’t slipped at all since her days hosting her 1990s-era talk show, The Rosie O’Donnell Show. The 64-year-old radiated confidence and charm.
O’Donnell nodded to Trump at the start of her 15-minute opener, calling him “Mango Mussolini” and saying, “If you thought that the president hated Jimmy Kimmel Live! when it was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, buckle up people!” Media writers covering the monologue predictably seized on those scraps for their headlines.
But the rest was almost entirely focused on O’Donnell’s fish-out-of-water experiences as an American settling into her new life in Ireland with her 13-year-old child. She told anecdotes about Ireland’s drinking culture, cab drivers, being a famous person abroad and, especially, her attempt to romance a kindly pharmacist.
The criticism has been made many times that current late-night shows, including NBC’s Saturday Night Live, are Trump-obsessed. They also tend to be obsessed with the media, Hollywood and breaking news, because that’s the world late-night hosts and writers know — and that’s what everyday conversations can sound like when you work in Los Angeles or New York.
Whereas O’Donnell’s monologue was refreshing fare because it was about living a normal-ish life and interacting with everyday people. She also, by and large, seemed rather happy — again, not a word that Trump supporters would typically associate with O’Donnell (or, for that matter, that Kimmel viewers would likely associate with Kimmel). The move abroad, it seems, has been good for O’Donnell, just as her friends have told reporters over the last couple of years.
At the end of the monologue, O’Donnell predicted Trump was going to be angry because she didn’t talk about him and perhaps so. She’ll surely have more to say about the president over the next few shows, giving Kimmel’s audience the latest red meat. But if the best revenge really is living well, then O’Donnell seems to have already gotten hers.
