- Ellen DeGeneres said she didn't really know Rosie O'Donnell after appearing on her show.
- "It hurt my feelings, like a baby, and I never really got over it," O'Donnell said.
Rosie O'Donnell says she felt hurt when Ellen DeGeneres claimed not to know her very well in 2004, years after appearing on O'Donnell's talk show.
In a recent appearance on "Watch What Happens Live" with Andy Cohen, O'Donnell spoke about DeGeneres after Cohen asked her a fan question that he was "interested in."
"I loved your iconic Lebanese moment with Ellen DeGeneres on the 'Rosie O'Donnell Show,' but why were you never a guest on Ellen's show during its 20-year run?" the question read, referring to a moment when DeGeneres was a guest on O'Donnell's show in 1996, and the pair danced around the idea that DeGeneres — who had not yet come out — was a lesbian.
DeGeneres would officially come out just months later.
"Were you really never?" Cohen asked O'Donnell, who responded, "Never," saying she was never asked to be on the show.
"We had a little bit of a weird thing," O'Donnell continued. "After my show went off the air and hers was coming on the air, Larry King was on with Ellen, and he said, 'What ever happened to Rosie O'Donnell? Her show went down the tubes. She came out as a lesbian and disappeared.'"
"Ellen said, and I'm quoting, 'I don't know Rosie, we're not friends,'" O'Donnell said.
According to a transcript from the episode of "Larry King Live" from 2004, DeGeneres did acknowledge that she knew O'Donnell and that she had been on her show.
"I don't really know Rosie that well," DeGeneres said to King, who asked if she had ever been on O'Donnell's show. "I mean, I've spoken to her, but we're not really friends."
O'Donnell told Cohen that when she watched the interview live, she was in bed with her former wife, Kelli Carpenter, and questioned whether she heard it right.
"It hurt my feelings like a baby, and I never really got over it," O'Donnell admitted.
O'Donnell said toward the end of "The Ellen DeGeneres Show's" run, producers did ask her to be on the show, but O'Donnell wanted to bring a friend — "because I thought it might be a little less awkward," she said — which the show would not allow.
"I wish her all good things in her life and that she should be well," O'Donnell said. "But I never did it."
DeGeneres' landmark daytime talk show came to an end in May, after nearly two decades on the air.
In an April episode of the show, DeGeneres reflected on the 25th anniversary of her coming-out episode on the now-defunct ABC sitcom "Ellen."
"When I came out, people warned me that it was going to ruin my career. They were right for a while. For exactly three years, I lost my career. But look at me now," the 64-year-old told her studio audience in April.
She continued: "It goes to show you how important it is to be your authentic self and how important it is to accept others as their authentic selves. I didn't see a lot of people like me on television when I was a kid."