Oprah Winfrey On How Rosie O’Donnell Dealt With Show Cancellation: ‘I’m Proud Of The Way She Handled It’

Oprah Winfrey said she felt it was her duty to personally call Rosie O’Donnell recently, and let “The Rosie Show” host know the talk show was being cut from her Oprah Winfrey Network.

“Yes, I literally did that, because there was nobody else who could make that conversation or make that call. There was no one else who could make that call but me, because I am the person who got on the plane and went to her house and tried to convince her or see if this is what she wanted to do,” Oprah told Access Hollywood’s Jill Martin at Oprah’s Lifeclass, The Tour. “I’m the one that went to her house and asked her [to do the talk show], so I would have to be the one to pick up the phone and call her and say, ‘It’s not working out.’”

The network head said that despite the cancellation last month (the final episode aired on OWN on March 30), there was no drama between the two women.

“Rosie has been nothing but a class act. So all the, ‘twee-dee-dee,’ the ‘dah-dah-dah’ about there’s, you know, bickering between us or it was a feud is absolutely not true,” Oprah insisted. “She handled herself and I handled myself like a real woman, because that’s what she is — a real woman, not just an aging female. We’re not. We’re real women and what real women do when there is conflict or difficulty — and this is what I had said to her from the very first meeting, ‘If there is a problem, come to me. If I have a problem, I’ll come to you. We’re not gonna have it all out in the press and, you know, be foolish about it. We’re gonna be real women about it,’” Oprah continued. “And that is what we did.”

Oprah said Rosie took the news well.

“I’m so proud of the way she handled it,” she added.

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