Rosie O’Donnell, 64, has revealed that ABC prevented her from including a segment featuring Epstein survivors during her stint hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live!
She wound up filming and posting a video of the women dressed in white and singing Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” in response to Attorney General Todd Blanche’s declaration that he did “not know if there are men out there who abused these women.” Kimmel, 58, re-posted the video on his Instagram story.
But O’Donnell’s initial plan was for the segment to air during her final Kimmel episode, she said on The Jann Arden Podcast.
“My idea for the last night was to do the Epstein reveal,” O’Donnell said, “and they said that they were certain that could not happen.”
O’Donnell also said that she wanted to close her first monologue with a parody of “Danny Boy,” in which she eviscerates Trump, whom she dubs “Donnie Boy.” ABC, however, pulled the segment “right before the 4:00 time that we started.” She was able to perform the bit during her final episode guest-hosting, but ABC’s intervention meant she was scrambling before the first episode taped.
“I had five minutes to prepare a different ending to the monologue,” she said. “Five minutes.”
Her revelation comes amid a protracted battle between late-night hosts and MAGA-saturated networks.CBS canceled The Late Show With Stephen Colbert after Paramount’s merger with the MAGA-friendly company Skydance.
Last September, ABC pulled Kimmel off the air “indefinitely” after the host made a joke about MAGA’s reaction to Charlie Kirk’s assassination. The show returned five days later after the network received major backlash. And just this month, Trump’s FCC goon, Brendan Carr, blocked an interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico from airing on the network.
Trump’s “FCC has threatened me, threatened our show, threatened our network, ABC, our affiliates, our local stations, based on simple, traditional, editorial decisions, guest bookings it would seem they don’t like,” Kimmel said at the time.
Kimmel announced O’Donnell as a guest host before clearing her with the network, which O’Donnell learned after she agreed.
O’Donnell closed out her time hosting with an expression of gratitude and a condemnation of MAGA’s censorship.
“I’d like to thank Jimmy Kimmel for inviting me to do this,” she said, “and for reminding everyone that we have the right to free speech in this country, whether Orange Voldemort likes it or not.”
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