Rosie O'Donnell hilariously reveals how a woman took her in after getting lost in Dublin

Sunday World

10-05-2025

SHOCK SAVIOUR |
'You know Rosie, I wouldn't open the door unless you were on The Late Late Show.'
The Rosie O'Donnell Show star said the house owner didn't know her identity, but had recognised her from a recent appearance on The Late Late Show.
Rosie was on her way to a podcast interview about her childhood trauma after the tragic loss of her mum when a taxi driver dropped her at the wrong address.
When she knocked on the door, a lady in a bathrobe, just out of the shower, answered it.
'She said, 'You look familiar, where do I know you from?'' Rosie reveals. ''I'm an American actress.' 'You were on The Late Late Show, you've got an autistic child.' I said, 'Yes I was.' 'What's your name?' 'Rosie.' 'I'm Jennifer, come on in.''
Rosie with Venetia Quick
Jennifer connected Rosie to her wifi and helped her contact radio presenter and podcaster Venetia Quick of The Grief Pod.
Before leaving, Rosie advised Jennifer: ''Listen, I just want you to know you shouldn't do this again [let a stranger into her home]. In New York nobody would ever do this.
'She laughed, 'You know Rosie, I wouldn't open the door unless you were on The Late Late Show.'
The US celebrity with Donegal ancestry who moved to Ireland after Donald Trump's election to a second term as president, later spoke with Venetia Quick about her Irish connections – and the untimely death of her mother when she was just 11.
Rosie says: 'Mum died in 1973… she died on St Patrick's Day the 17th of March and was buried on my birthday, the 21st.
'She was on the parish council at Christ the King, our local Catholic church. A lot of people knew her and it was such a tragic story… a woman with five children at the age of 39 gets diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer and when they opened her up they said there is nothing they can do.
'And so she died shortly thereafter. She went to the hospital and we would go to visit her there and it felt very scary and weird.
'She came home for a while, but right before she died she went back to the hospital and she had to have her friends help her to the car. I remember that and I remember thinking something bad is going to happen.
'And then I saw my dad in the playroom looking out the window and I just said, 'Is Mommy going to die?' And he turned so I couldn't look at any part of his face and put his nose to the corner of the room and said, 'We hope not, honey, we hope not.'
'The next thing everybody was at our house on the 17th, St Patrick's Day, and I remember waking up that morning and thinking, 'well nothing bad can happen today because today's lucky day for the Irish and we are 100 per cent Irish.''
However, Rosie soon learned the devastating news that her beloved mother had died. 'The days that followed after Mother's death were horrifying,' she says. Read more
'I felt like I would wake up at any moment and it was not going to be true. My little brother, Timmy, is five years younger than me and was born the day before me so it was his birthday as well. We both got a lot of gifts and it just felt so wrong.
'My little brother said, 'You have to be the mommy now.' I was the oldest girl, I got to be the mother, and that's what I ended up doing [in her adult life]… I adopted five children and had two foster kids.'
Rosie revealed that her father's family were from Donegal, Tyrone and Belfast.
Her grandfather was Irish-born but her father was born in America. 'After my mother died he took us back to Donegal and Tyrone and Belfast, where his family was raised,' she says.
'I still have cousins here in Belfast and in Ardglass [Co Down]. And we've been up there a bunch of times to stay with them. It's so lovely having family here and I remember we first met them in 1973, that summer right after my mother died.'
Rosie on the Late Late with Patrick Kielty
News in 90 seconds - 10th May 2025
Rosie, who has been a staunch critic of Donald Trump for decades, moved to Dublin in January.
She says: 'When he got the nomination I said to my therapist, 'I can't survive another four years with him, I know I can't.'
She said, 'What's the plan?' And I said I would move to Ireland, it's the only country I would move to, I have family there that we have kept in touch with and I know that I can get citizenship because of my grandparents.' And she said, 'Let's start to make that plan.'
Rosie moved here with her 12-year-old non-binary child, Clay, because of the Trump administration's policies.
'I spoke to Clay and said that for trans people and trans kids and gay people it's [America] is not a safe place to be. And for women, they've taken away our rights that I remember fighting for in the early '70s.' Although she misses her family who still live in the US, O'Donnell says she has no regrets about leaving America. 'Clay is very happy here,' she says. 'Clay has autism and supports are being taken away in America.'
Although Rosie's friends were surprised she left America for Ireland, she points out that she quit her TV show at the height of its success.
'I made crazy, insane money, the kind of money if you made it for one year you'd never have to work again… and I did it for six years,' she adds.