{"id":6511,"date":"2026-08-24T15:09:03","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T15:09:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=6511"},"modified":"2026-08-24T15:09:03","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T15:09:03","slug":"rosie-odonnell-should-host-her-own-show-on-late-night-tv-and-shatter-comedys-greatest-glass-ceiling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=6511","title":{"rendered":"Rosie O\u2019Donnell Should Host Her Own Show on Late Night TV \u2014 and Shatter Comedy\u2019s Greatest Glass Ceiling"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tLate night is in the doldrums. It\u2019s not just that the remaining hosts are taking much of the summer off. But, post-Stephen Colbert on CBS, ABC\u2019s Jimmy Kimmel and NBC\u2019s Jimmy Fallon both feel closer to the end of their respective tenures than the beginning. The whole genre feels ripe for a shake-up \u2014 lest it go away entirely.<\/p>\n

Read more Orlando Bloom to Be Honored During Venice Film Festival With Filming Italy Award<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tEnter Rosie O\u2019Donnell. The comedian and Donald Trump antagonist just spent a week filling in for Jimmy Kimmel, and the results were TV magic. Over four nights, O\u2019Donnell, the 1990s talk show host whose two stints on \u201cThe View\u201d both fizzled out, proved that she may yet have another act, and it may be on one of television\u2019s grandest \u2014 diminished, but still grandest \u2014 stages.<\/p>\n

\n\tYes, O\u2019Donnell skewered President Trump, and it, of course, drew attention: O\u2019Donnell is, these days, perhaps best known as an object of Trump\u2019s obsession. (Indeed, the White House issued a statement that O\u2019Donnell \u201cis a nasty woman and a total slob whose brain has been completely destroyed by Trump Derangement Syndrome.\u201d) But her approach to her monologues tended toward reconnecting with the audience over rat-a-tat resistance patter. Combining this impulse for empathetic opening-up with a savage instinct for finding the laugh, O\u2019Donnell proved that, while late night may be growing a bit soft, she arrived at \u201cKimmel\u201d ready for the spotlight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s been almost 40 years since Joan Rivers tried to break into the late-night boys\u2019 club \u2014 and got fired by Fox after a single season. O\u2019Donnell\u2019s hiring as a woman at a flagship late-night show would break further ground \u2014 but would also bring in someone who totally reveres television and knows how to make it well. A form of TV that seems close to dying could use a jolt of energy, and O\u2019Donnell, with her built-in fanbase and her ability to connect with, and provoke, audiences, might just be late night\u2019s future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSound familiar? That\u2019s because we just saw it play out in fiction. In the universe of \u201cHacks,\u201d women have been given only paltry chances to claim their piece of late night. Eventually, Jean Smart\u2019s character Deborah Vance, whose comedy alternately undermines and exalts her own image and is rooted in her rock-solid showbiz chops, gets her chance. (Let\u2019s, for now, not worry about the fact that it all blows up in relatively short order.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOn \u201cHacks,\u201d as in our world, late-night looks like a glass cliff for women \u2014 the field is shrinking, with CBS now out of the game entirely, just in time for a woman to potentially get called up. And yet, O\u2019Donnell didn\u2019t seem to mind, and hit the ground running on \u201cKimmel.\u201d The female late-night hosts of recent vintage, CBS\u2019 Taylor Tomlinson and NBC\u2019s Lilly Singh, have seemed limited by both buried-in-the-evening time slot and by relatively low name recognition. O\u2019Donnell\u2019s hiring would be a moment that would electrify late night, drawing in an underserved audience of women and gay men and generating reams of press.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more \u2018The Gentlemen\u2019 Officially Renewed for Season 3 as First Season 2 Trailer Drops: \u2018I\u2019m Looking Forward to Pushing the Boundaries Further,\u2019 Guy Ritchie Says (EXCLUSIVE)<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tShifting from wish-casting O\u2019Donnell into a late-night berth and actually considering what might be possible, there are obvious counterarguments. After early success, O\u2019Donnell has suffered disappointment after disappointment. She left \u201cThe View\u201d in 2007 over an incident in which she and co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck were presented arguing in split-screen, and then returned for another short run, from 2014 to 2015, that was simply unremarkable before she once again quit. In between, she tried an Oprah Winfrey Network talk show and a Sirius radio show. Nothing stuck.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut unlike on \u201cThe View,\u201d where she was one of several panelists sniping round-robin style, O\u2019Donnell, here, would be in a position that we know suits her \u2014 behind a desk, telling jokes. She came into \u201cThe View\u201d to blow it up; as regards TV talk, though, we already know she\u2019s a traditionalist. In childhood, O\u2019Donnell was a student of early TV, and she seems to have totally internalized old-school broadcast rhythms. Among them are a total and complete interest in whoever is in front of her. I\u2019ve written before that, in his final months, Colbert seemed to come most alive when his interview subjects got around to praising him, and Kimmel or Fallon\u2019s strengths are not necessarily in interviewing, either. O\u2019Donnell, on the other hand, knew how to steer guests from the digressive Smart to the antsy Richard Gadd toward the funniest and most charming versions of themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tShe was coming to the show with the zeal of someone who\u2019s been out of the game too long and eager for her at-bat. The standard monologue nowadays can feel like a laundry list of cracks about Trump\u2019s daily misdeeds. O\u2019Donnell\u2019s curiosity \u2014 for all that she\u2019s the President\u2019s b\u00eate noire \u2014 ranged more widely. She got personal about her family and dating life in a manner I\u2019d never expect a Jimmy to do. And she did so with a sense of real craft, the sort that comes when you\u2019re excited to be somewhere and not just clocking in for season umpteen.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut then, O\u2019Donnell is, first, a storyteller, well acquainted by now with fitting the tales she tells within the time between the \u201cApplause\u201d sign lighting up and the first commercial break. The discursive looseness of her posting on social media \u2014 where, for instance, she recently disclosed her face-lift \u2014 falls away when the camera is on her. When I interviewed her last year, about her guest role on \u201cAnd Just Like That,\u201d she described to me that, in her newly adopted home of Ireland, the local pharmacist was so kind to her that O\u2019Donnell developed a crush. On her first Kimmel monologue, the story was blown out, underlined, illuminated by a star\u2019s charisma. Of course, it built to the perfect punchline.<\/p>\n

\n\tWho knows if she\u2019d get the chance \u2014 Kimmel perennially makes noise about wanting to leave, but hasn\u2019t yet \u2014 or if she\u2019d want to. (Although the fact of her returning to the U.S. before the end of the Trump presidency, which she once swore she wouldn\u2019t, suggests a bit of fire in the belly.) But one wonders if the industry, not just viewers, shares the sense that the TV landscape is significantly more interesting with O\u2019Donnell in it \u2014 and that interest is exactly what late-night is lacking. If this is O\u2019Donnell\u2019s moment, it\u2019s not because of who the President is. It\u2019s because of who, over four remarkable nights of old-school television, she reminded us she <\/em>is.<\/p>\n

Read more Reggie Watts\u2019 Theme Song Axed From \u2018Comedy Bang Bang\u2019 Podcast After Report Alleging \u2018Reckless\u2019 Drug Use in Relationships<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After hosting ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live,’ Rosie O’Donnell would be a prime candidate for her own show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6094,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[4713],"class_list":["post-6511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv","tag-rosie-o-donnell-2"],"yoast_head":"\nRosie O\u2019Donnell Should Host Her Own Show on Late Night TV \u2014 and Shatter Comedy\u2019s Greatest Glass Ceiling - Relocation Observer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=6511\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Rosie O\u2019Donnell Should Host Her Own Show on Late Night TV \u2014 and Shatter Comedy\u2019s Greatest Glass Ceiling - 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