Rosie O’Donnell Hasselbeck Feud: ‘Set Up’ Reveal

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Rosie O’Donnell Believes 2007 Argument with Elisabeth Hasselbeck Was Staged

Rosie O’Donnell believes her on-air 2007 argument with Elisabeth Hasselbeck was staged by producers.

Discussing the clash on ABC’s The View when O’Donnell first served as a cohost almost two decades ago, during an Australian radio interview, O’Donnell did not mince her words. “The whole thing, I think, was a set-up,” O’Donnell said on Nova’s Ricki-Lee,Tim & Joel program on Monday,October 6.

Referring to the argument’s visual production, which included a split-screen that showed O’donnell and Hasselbeck, 48, arguing onscreen at once, O’Donnell noted, “our producer [was] not an ‘on-the-fly kind of guy’… he wouldn’t have been like, ‘Let’s go to a split screen.’ That was prepared.”

The cohosts’ big bust-up saw their misaligned political opinions reach boiling point after multiple on-air disagreements throughout the daytime talk show’s 10th season.

Yelling at one another from across the panel as fellow hosts Sherri Shepherd and Joy Behar watched on, O’Donnell and Hasselbeck slung insults back and forth for around ten minutes. While revisiting the argument during her new interview, O’Donnell said she felt surprised at the time to stir such a response from Hasselbeck.

“What I was thinking the whole time was, ‘I cannot believe that this woman, after all I did for her,’ ” O’Donnell reflected. “When I took that job, I made one commitment to myself, that I was not going to be her enemy [and] that I was going to meet her as a person.”

Background: The View and its History of On-Air Conflict

The View, which premiered in 19