Rosie O'Donnell on Who Do You Think You Are: Unlocking the Mystery of Her Mother

Rosie O'Donnell said it plainly: "Nobody said mom in that house or mommy or mother from 1973 on. It was as if she disappeared or was deleted. And it was a…" — and Premier Guide Miami was in the room when it happened.

On February 7, 2011, NBC Universal held a press call with Rosie O'Donnell ahead of her episode of Who Do You Think You Are , airing February 18 at 8:00 p.m. The genealogy series — which had previously featured Susan Sarandon, Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, and Lisa Kudrow — traced O'Donnell's maternal Irish roots alongside her brother Ed. Premier Guide Miami's Daedrian McNeal was among the journalists on the call.

O'Donnell's mother, Roseann Murtha O'Donnell, died of liver cancer in 1973 when Rosie was ten years old. She was an only child. After her death, the subject was effectively closed in the O'Donnell household — her name rarely spoken, her story untold. The episode marked the first time Rosie and her brother Eddie had ever spoken openly about their mother on camera.

Why she said yes

"I had watched it and thought to myself, 'Wow, those people are so brave,'" O'Donnell said of the show. "I didn't really know very much about my family history at all." When series producer Lisa Kudrow asked her to participate, O'Donnell agreed on one condition: they would focus on her mother's side. "I would really be curious because I knew nothing about her life. She died in '73 and it was never really spoken about in any way. She was an only child." She then called her brother Eddie — the oldest of five children — and asked him to join her. "I thought it would really help our relationship. My mom's death is something that was never discussed, and still isn't discussed even though we're nearing 50."

Premier Guide Miami's Daedrian McNeal asked the following questions:

What was the most revealing thing you found out about your family background, and were there any expectations before you decided to do the search? And as a follow-up — are you looking forward to the re-launch of the Rosie O'Donnell Show?

Rosie O'Donnell: The most shocking thing I found out about my family was just the amount of suffering that endured. When I spoke to the producers before we started they said, "What would be the most devastating thing for you? What's something you don't want to find out?" I said, "I guess I don't want to find out that they lived a life like Angela's Ashes, the Frank McCourt book." And they just sort of nodded and didn't say anything. And I came to find out it was very similar, if not even harder than the life Frank McCourt lived. So that was really shocking to me. And yes, I'm thrilled to be going back to do a new Rosie show for the Oprah Winfrey Network. Oprah Winfrey is an epic talent and for her to ask me was a huge honor, and I can't wait to start.

The silence that followed

O'Donnell described the atmosphere in her family after her mother's death with striking clarity: "Nobody said mom in that house or mommy or mother from 1973 on. It was like Lord Voldemort — you couldn't say the name. My mother died and we went to Ireland and then all her clothes were removed, all her stuff was removed and no one ever mentioned her name again. It was as if she disappeared or was deleted." She said the show forced her and her brother to finally unlock what she called "the dungeon" — the locked-away grief they had both carried for decades. "He actually used the word 'mommy' during filming, which was so — it was like I had a physical reaction in my body. Because no one ever said that word. Ever."

What they found

O'Donnell declined to reveal specific locations — "that's part of the thing you're not supposed to tell" — but confirmed the research took her to two countries, one of which surprised her, and ultimately to Ireland. The discoveries included baptismal certificates, work records, census documents, newspaper articles, and photographs. "I was very impressed with the staff that they have there, what they were able to find — things that I couldn't believe they found." One revelation centered on a photograph that had hung in the family's den throughout her childhood. "Whenever we would ask my grandmother who is that picture, she would never say. No one ever knew who this was but this photo was up there our whole life." The show identified the woman in the photograph, traced her story, and revealed a connection O'Donnell described as "fairly miraculous and pretty shocking." The woman had died a tragic death. "I don't know why my grandmother never told it," O'Donnell said, "because she obviously had to know who the person was."

The emotional impact

"I almost feel as though I'm carrying all of the stories of my mother's family that brought her to this country and brought me here as a result," O'Donnell said. "I never thought it would change anything about me. I thought it would almost be boring. I did not expect the emotional impact that the show had on my life." She described the experience as reframing her entire sense of her own childhood: "Sometimes if you don't know the history of your family and the struggles that brought them to the United States and what they had to endure, you take your own reality and put the frame around it as the most difficult thing that anyone can survive. When you come to find out that your life was pretty blessed comparatively — it changes things." She also recommended the book Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss by Hope Edelman to anyone who has lost a mother: "It was probably the most healing thing that ever happened to me in terms of losing a mother."

Daedrian McNeal returned for a follow-up question later in the call:

When are you coming back to Miami? And here's my real question — you have an admirable humanitarian spirit. Discovering the information you did about your mom, how much of that do you think actually came from her?

O'Donnell: I'm looking at my schedule right now — it's on the 22nd, the evening of the 22nd for my kids' day and I can't wait. It has been horrible here. It's been more snow than I can ever remember. It's freezing cold. It's like every day I'm like, why don't I live there? I love it there and I will eventually live there for good. As for your real question — a lot. A lot of the stuff I found about her — I remember as a child she would always take all the clothes and pack them up for St. Vincent de Paul and go donate them. I remember seeing kids who were poor in our neighborhood wearing some of our old stuff. Just this giving back was a big part of her life and who she was. And I think that was learned from her, or I got the gene from her, because she did a lot of that in her life. Social justice meant a lot. And I think getting to find out more about her has been a gift, and the show really helped me to do that.

What's next

O'Donnell also revealed she had been working for over three years with playwright Dick Scanlan on a one-woman show about her mother, with Michael Mayer set to direct and Tom Holtz producing. "We had a reading a few months ago and we need to work on it some more. These things take a very long time." She also confirmed her upcoming talk show on the Oprah Winfrey Network, launching in September 2011, would follow a single-topic format modeled more closely on Oprah's own show than on O'Donnell's original daytime program. "It won't be four or five celebrities an hour bringing them through promoting something. It will be much more single-topic oriented — social issues, Broadway shows, some celebrities, books, movies, documentaries."

Rosie O'Donnell's episode of Who Do You Think You Are aired on NBC on February 18, 2011.

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