Variety TV critic Daniel D'Addario sounds D'addled in his D-addoration of Rosie O'Donnell after her four nights guest-hosting for Jimmy Kimmel on ABC. She's still a star! She could be....the future of late night! This was the headline:
Rosie O’Donnell Should Host Her Own Show on Late-Night TV — and Shatter Comedy’s Greatest Glass Ceiling
The "glass ceiling" part is just silly. Joan Rivers broke the ceiling decades ago, and Samantha Bee and Lilly Singh and Taylor Tomlinson have taken turns. Late-night comedy is in the doldrums, we're told, and "The whole genre feels ripe for a shake-up — lest it go away entirely."
Screenshot/ABCEnter Rosie O’Donnell. 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’Donnell, the 1990s talk show host whose two stints on The View both fizzled out, proved that she may yet have another act, and it may be on one of television’s grandest — diminished, but still grandest — stages.
TV magic? Variety lacks sobriety.
It’s been almost 40 years since Joan Rivers tried to break into the late-night boys’ club — and got fired by Fox after a single season. O’Donnell’s hiring as a woman at a flagship late-night show would break further ground — 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’Donnell, with her built-in fanbase and her ability to connect with, and provoke, audiences, might just be late night’s future.
D'Addario notes that Singh and Tomlinson were near-total unknowns working deep into late night, but "O’Donnell’s 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."
Rosie talking about her personal life, like her non-binary daughter that scolds her for using the "wrong" pronouns, was somehow some great stuff:
She was coming to the show with the zeal of someone who’s 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’s daily misdeeds. O’Donnell’s curiosity — for all that she’s the President’s bête noire — ranged more widely. She got personal about her family and dating life in a manner I’d never expect a Jimmy to do. And she did so with a sense of real craft, the sort that comes when you’re excited to be somewhere and not just clocking in for season umpteen.
D'Addario knows this might go just about as well in the ratings as Rivers or Bee, but keep hope alive:
But one wonders if the industry, not just viewers, shares the sense that the TV landscape is significantly more interesting with O’Donnell in it — and that interest is exactly what late night is lacking. If this is O’Donnell’s moment, it’s not because of who the President is. It’s because of who, over four remarkable nights of old-school television, she reminded us she is.
PS: Naturally, he loved it when Rosie loved his gush.
major pic.twitter.com/KBZnTflrP3
— Daniel D'Addario (@DPD_) August 24, 2026
