Rosie O’Donnell knew when her time as host of “The Rosie O’Donnell Show” would end.
The 64-year-old comedian exclusively told Page Six that he quit as soon as he heard he had $100 million in the bank.
“When I heard that (number), I thought, ‘Okay, that’s it,'” O’Donnell recalled. “And everyone was like, ‘Why are you leaving?’
The Emmy Award winner said she wanted to spend more time with her children after she realized she had “enough money to take care of everyone in my life, including charities and strangers.”
“I wanted to go to their softball game. I wanted to go to the school play,” she added.
“The View” alum’s talk show of the same name ran from 1996 to 2002 and was a huge success. Warner Bros. even offered her $100 million for two more years. She declined, shocking the bigwigs at the studio.
“They were like, ‘Why would you say no?’ And I was like, ‘Because I already have that money and if I think I need more, there’s something wrong with me,'” she recalled.
“I don’t understand what billionaires are talking about,” the “A League of Their Own” star said. “I don’t understand how people measure their lives only by money and not by what they can do for others.”
O’Donnell, who moved to Ireland after President Trump won the 2024 presidential election, has returned stateside with her one-man play “Common Knowledge,” which received critical acclaim and had a limited run on Broadway.
The show explores O’Donnell’s traumatic childhood (her mother died of breast cancer when she was 10), as well as her life in Ireland and raising her fifth child, Clay, who has autism.
The “Harriet the Spy” star said the show’s central theme was about motherhood and how a “motherless daughter” learned “to be a mother to all these children.”
Ms O’Donnell added that her experience as a mother to Clay was “completely different”.
“It’s allowed me to see how I was raising a child when I was young and in the midst of so much fame, and now how I’m raising this child who is more vulnerable than any other child. It creates an intimacy in a way,” she explained.
