Media outlets have received advance copies of Ramin Setoodeh’s new behind-the-scenes book, Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of “The View,” and the quotes from the book are already raising eyebrows.
Instinct reported yesterday on frictions chronicled in the book between past co-hosts Rosie O’Donnell and Elizabeth Hasselbeck.
Out lesbian O’Donnell apparently admits to a non-sexual “crush” on the very conservative Hasselbeck in the tell-all, which led EH to tell the world she immediately began to pray for the comic.
O’Donnell took to Twitter to clarify the comment and take a slap at Setoodeh with a #raminSUX hashtag:
https://twitter.com/Rosie/status/1110611425838465025
Today, PEOPLE quotes O’Donnell as saying that, although she “revered” Whoopi Goldberg before working with her on the show, Goldberg was “mean” to her. And not just run-of-the-mill “mean.”
Clashes between the two funny ladies reportedly happened during both of O’Donnell’s seasons on the gabfest.
In 2009, when Goldberg apparently asserted that director Roman Polanski hadn’t committed “rape rape,” although he’d pled guilty to the charge in 1979, O’Donnell pushed back.
That resulted in an “angry letter” from Goldberg to O’Donnell. O’Donnell reportedly wrote, “I’m sorry if that hurt your feelings. I have different feelings about it than you.”
She told Setoodeh she closed with, “And I stand up for what I believe, but I’ll never bet against you, Whoopi Goldberg.”
That said, O’Donnell still sees Goldberg as a force to be reckoned with.
“She’s a minority, feminist, smart, funny, groundbreaking legend who is black in America,” said O’Donnell in praise of the Oscar winner. “I’m never going to not have respect for Whoopi Goldberg.”
Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of “The View” hits bookstores April 2.