Rosie O'Donnell is speaking out about the bombshell cancellation of her show on the Oprah Winfrey Network.
"Lots of people coming up to me saying, "I love your new show," and I have to say, ‘Thank you, but we're cancelled.' Here's the bottom line. It's a business, right, and it didn't make financial sense to continue at the cost," said O'Donnell.
Rosie tapes her final show Tuesday. Her voice dripped with sarcasm as she read a tweet from her old nemesis Donald Trump.
"‘When will media executives learn that Rosie just hasn't got it.' Gee, I didn't see that one coming," said O'Donnell.
Trump had this new tweet Tuesday, "I am so glad @Rosie got fired by @Oprah. Rosie is a bully and it's always nice to see bullies go down!"
Trump has been sounding almost gleeful over O'Donnell's downfall.
"Rosie fails at everything. Now somebody else some moron will come and hire her again to do something else, and that'll fail. At some point let her rest. Let her go away. She'll never make it," Trump said on Fox and Friends Monday.
The Rosie Show has been plagued by lousy ratings and behind-the-scenes drama, including claims that O'Donnell frequently lost her temper and humiliated show staffers. One even called the show a "hell hole" to work on.
There's also a report that O'Donnell and Oprah were feuding, but last night O'Donnell denied any friction with her boss.
"Listen, Oprah gave me an amazing shot at doing this. She really did. She put me back on TV. She believed in me, I didn't know if I could do it again, truthfully. She said, 'I think you can,' and I said, 'I think I can too,' and off I came, here to Chicago," said O'Donnell.
O'Donnell offered this analysis of what went wrong with her show.
"We sort of started off the wrong way, we were kind of trying to do a little bit of what we had done 15 years ago and you can't do it," said O'Donnell.
There's another blow for Oprah's low-rated cable network, she just announced that OWN will lay off 30 people.
"As CEO, I have a responsibility to chart the course for long-term success for the network," Oprah said in a statement, she continued and said, "To wholly achieve that long-term success, this was a necessary next step."
Meanwhile, O'Donnell is putting the best spin possible face on the failure of the show to take off in the ratings and said, "Sometimes it doesn't work out the way you planned it. Can I tell you in the movie In my mind it was fantastic. It was a musical! Everybody marched out together and we sang "We are the World," and raise millions for charity. It's ok, it's still all good."
