Rosie O’Donnell revealed on “The Jann Arden Podcast” that she intends to perform a sit-down interview series with some of Jeffrey Epstein’s survivors after “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” rejected her pitch to interview them during her week of guest-hosting the late night show in August.
“My idea for the last night [of hosting ‘JKL!’] was to do the Epstein reveal, and they said that they were certain that could not happen,” the comedian explained earlier this month. “So I said, ‘Well, then I’m going to do it myself.’”
After her “Kimmel” idea was shot down, O’Donnell sat down with a number of Epstein survivors and shared a video to her Instagram page on Sept. 3. The clip saw her join the survivors in singing a rendition of Helen Reddy’s feminist anthem “I Am Woman.”
O’Donnell said the meet-up was the result of conversations she had been having with a representative of Survivor Sisters, a fact-based advocacy initiative formed by and for women who suffered as a result of Epstein’s sex trafficking network.
“I called her and said, ‘How many can we get here in three days?’ And she said eight,” O’Donnell explained. “We met, and I told them a little about my history and I told them why it means so much to me and to the human race and why this is of vital importance, and it’s an epidemic in our country and in the world, and I thank[ed] them for trusting me. And then we shot it.”
“We just shot it in a few hours, two hours. We shot the whole thing, and then people said, ‘Where’s the rest of it? We want to see the documentary,’” she continued. “I’m like, ‘It wasn’t a documentary. It was something we just did in three minutes.’”
“I will do a segment on each of those women, an up-close and personal, and will tell each of their stories, eight of them,” O’Donnell further announced. “Whether that’s in one full documentary to be released on a streaming service or whether it’s something we put on YouTube, or if I just release it on my social media and the women’s social media.”
“I’ve heard from them, they are very thankful,” she added. “They said no famous person has called to stand beside them beside me, which again I found shocking.”
TheWrap has reached out to ABC and “JKL!” for comment.
O’Donnell guest-hosted four episodes of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in late August. She, notably, did not specify on “The Jann Arden Podcast” why her pitch was turned down, but it came amid tensions between the network and the FCC, which have been raging for over a year. In August, ABC sued the FCC, accusing the agency of attacking its Free Speech rights.
Earlier this month, Kimmel pulled an interview with Democratic Texas Senate nominee James Talarico over alleged threats from the FCC aimed at ABC’s affiliate stations. Their conversation was instead posted on YouTube.
