Key points
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Rosie O’Donnell claimed that a crew from Fox News was “waiting” for her and “ran in mass screaming” at her.
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The comedian said that the crew shouted that Jesse Watters wanted to talk to her.
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“I’ve never watched Jesse Watters and I don’t ever care to,” she said in a TikTok.
Rosie O’Donnell doesn’t want to talk to Fox News.
The League of Their Own star shared a video on TikTok on Thursday claiming that a team from the news channel accosted her at the theater — presumably the Daryl Roth Theatre off-Broadway in New York City, where she is currently performing her one-woman show Common Knowledge.
“Today a fox crew was waiting for me to exit the car — they ran in mass screaming JESSE WATTERS WANTS TO TALK TO U,” O’Donnell claimed in the caption of her TikTok post. “so what ? — I have no desire to talk to him or fox (we lie to Americans) ‘news’ — so say what u need and go the f— away.”
Entertainment Weekly has reached out to representatives for Fox News for comment.
O’Donnell also addressed Watters and his crew in the video itself.
“So here’s what I wanna say to Jesse Watters and his gang of unruly reporter yellers at the theater today: no, I don’t want to speak or answer a question from Jesse Watters,” she said. “I’ve never watched Jesse Watters and I don’t ever care to. Okay?”
O’Donnell, who has long been outspoken about her liberal political beliefs and criticized conservative-leaning politicians and organizations, went on to explain her distaste for Watters.
“I’ve read enough about what he said about women and who he is and how his career began on the Bill O’Reilly show, of all places,” she said. “Okay, Jesse. You do what you do. Stay out of my orbit, okay?”
O’Donnell suggested that Watters’ crew didn’t go through the proper channels to secure an interview. “If you want to interview me, call my publicist,” she said. “That’s how it works. Don’t you know that yet?”
The comedian ended her video with another dig at Watters. “I’m not afraid of you,” she said. “I just have no interest in you in any capacity. TikTok, you don’t stop.”
Watters, who hosts Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime, has faced criticism in the past for his comments about women in politics. In January,Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called him a “pervert” as she rejected an invitation to appear on his show, citing his comments from October in which he claimed that she “wants to sleep with [Stephen] Miller” on his show.
“He has sexualized me on his show,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “He’s sexually harassed me on his show. He’s engaged in horrific, sexually exploitative rhetoric.”
In 2024, Watters received criticism for his seemingly sexist comments about Vice President Kamala Harris. “We don’t know who she is. We don’t know what she believes,” he said on Fox News’ The Five (per The Washington Post). “She’s going to get paralyzed in the Situation Room while the generals have their way with her.”
On a subsequent ep of the show, Watters denied that his comments had any sexual connotations. “People are misconstruing my comments to mean something inappropriate,” he said. “I wasn’t suggesting anything of a sexual nature. I was expressing my opinion that VP Harris’s current leadership style could be an issue if elected.”
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In 2017, Watters faced pushback for a comment he made on The Five about Ivanka Trump: “I really liked how she was speaking into that microphone.”
Watters defended himself on social media after the controversy, writing, “On air I was referring to Ivanka’s voice and how it resonates like a smooth jazz radio DJ. This was in no way a joke about anything else.”
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