Rosie O'Donnell vs. Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Photo / Youtube
Tensions on US daytime talk show The View exploded during one infamous 2007 episode — an astonishing on-air spat that left the programme's studio audience shaken and one celebrity guest "terrified".
Panellists Rosie O'Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck had diametrically opposing views on most social and political issues; their stoushes during The View's daily "Hot Topics" segment were always heated. For the most part, it was the stuff of great TV.
But on May 17, 2007, a question from O'Donnell during a discussion about the Iraq War lit a fuse between the pair that would explode live on-air a week later.
"I just want to say something — 655,000 Iraqi civilians are dead. Who are the terrorists?" O'Donnell asked.
It was a remark that left her co-hosts stunned — and was soon picked up by news outlets who joined the dots and reported O'Donnell had labelled US troops "terrorists".
As the story grew and controversy raged, O'Donnell expected Hasselbeck to publicly defend her. She declined.
O'Donnell was angry. This exclusive excerpt from Ramin Setoodeh's new book Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of The View picks up the scene one week later, as tensions finally came to a head in front of an audience of millions.
On May 23 2007, O'Donnell's anger finally exploded, in what will forever be remembered as doomsday on The View. In its decade of existence, the show had been responsible for its share of feuds. But nothing in daytime TV history could have prepared viewers for this breaking point. Although O'Donnell had once sworn that she would never replicate Jerry Springer, she was about to give that show a run for its money. "They became very personal on air," co host Joy Behar told Setoodeh.
"That's the thing you try to avoid on television. I don't get personal. I never had a personal fight with Elisabeth Hasselbeck, and that's why we're fine."
Barbara Walters was absent that morning. "I remember we were downstairs in the make-up room," said the comedian Sherri Shepherd, who was filling in as a guest co-host. As Hasselbeck talked, O'Donnell made sarcastic asides to no one in particular — the tension was building.
"I got make-up and hair," Shepherd said. "I'm a Pentecostal girl. I said to them, 'Do you speak in tongues, because we need to start praying. I don't know what is going on here!' When we got to the table upstairs, nobody was talking. I could see Rosie was mad."
On TV, O'Donnell kept her feelings in check for a few minutes. After a commercial, Behar pulled out a page of complaints against George Bush, whom she called "the worst president that we've ever had in the history of this country". Hasselbeck frowned. "Let me get through the list," Behar said.
"It's very long, so we might be here for a while," Hasselbeck huffed.
O'Donnell stayed on the sidelines at first. Behar objected to a number of infractions from Bush, including his reluctance to visit New Orleans right after Hurricane Katrina and his inability to pronounce the word nuclear correctly. Hasselbeck tried to shut down the discussion. "We're a democratic society," she said. "You have the election in 2008 to change things."
"Do you know how much damage this guy can do in a year and a half?" Behar said, incredulous. "He can invade Iran for all we know." Hasselbeck insisted that the Republicans in Congress backed Bush for not pulling out of Iraq because it would send the wrong signal to our "enemies".
That gave O'Donnell an entrance. "You just said our enemies in Iraq. Did Iraq attack us?"
"No, Iraq did not attack us, Rosie," Hasselbeck said. "We've been there before. I'm saying our enemies, al-Qaeda, are you hearing that?"
"Please, let's have a conversation," Behar said.
"Do you know why I don't want to do this, Joy?" O'Donnell's voice was cold. "Let me tell you why. Here's how it gets spun in the media: big, fat, lesbian, loud Rosie attacks innocent, pure, Christian Elisabeth, and I'm not doing it."
"I haven't heard that line," Hasselbeck said.
Suddenly, the debate had changed its direction. They were rehashing the details of their broken friendship in front of millions of viewers. "Every time when you've been hurt, did I reach out to you?" O'Donnell asked.
"I just don't understand why it's my fault if people spin words that you put out there or phrases that suggest things," Hasselbeck said. "I gave you an opportunity two days ago to clarify the statement that got you in trouble. I did it as a friend."
That inflamed O'Donnell. She accused Hasselbeck of not siding with her.
"Excuse me. Let me speak," Hasselbeck said.
"You're going to doublespeak."
"I'm not a doublespeaker! I don't believe you believe that our troops are terrorists." Hasselbeck told O'Donnell that she shouldn't have used the death toll in Iraq as part of their previous debate.
"It's true, you don't like the facts," O'Donnell said, contradicting the advice she often gave Hasselbeck.
"I'm all about facts."
Shepherd tried to cut to a commercial, but the show still had time left.
"They wouldn't let it go," she told me later. "It was the worst feeling in the world."
In the control room upstairs, director Mark Gentile kept cutting back and forth as in a ping-pong match. When O'Donnell's mother-in-law had visited the day before, he'd used a split screen so viewers could see her in the audience. Rene Butler, the show's technical director, quickly suggested following that template as the arguments ratcheted up. Gentile approved it. "I said, 'That makes sense, because the reaction is as important as the person delivering the information','" Gentile recalled. "That's all it was."
From the corner of her eye, O'Donnell saw in the monitor what they had done and she was fuming. She thought the show was sabotaging her for ratings, since The View had never used a split screen in a Hot Topics discussion before. She'd get to the bottom of this, but she had to fend off Hasselbeck first.
"They're your thoughts," Hasselbeck said, wagging her finger at O'Donnell. "Defend your own insinuations."
"Every time I defend them, it's poor little Elisabeth that I'm picking on."
"You know what? Poor little Elisabeth is not poor little Elisabeth."
"That's right. That's why I'm not going to fight with you anymore, because it's absurd. So for three weeks, you can say all the Republican crap that you want."
Hasselbeck struck another low blow. "It's much easier to fight someone like Donald Trump, isn't it? Because he's obnoxious."
Behar and Shepherd stood up to leave the table, which drew some laughter in the studio.
"I think it's sad," Hasselbeck said, not easing up. "Because I don't understand how there can be such hurt feelings when all I did was say, 'Look, why don't you tell everybody what you said?' I did that as a friend."
"What you did was not defend me," O'Donnell said, her voice quivering. "I asked you if you believed what the Republican pundits were saying. You said nothing. And that's cowardly."
"No, no, no," Hasselbeck replied, furious. "Do not call me a coward. Because, number one, I sit here every single day, open my heart and tell people exactly what I believe. It was not cowardly. It was honest."
"Is there no commercial on this show?" Behar said. "What are we on — PBS?"
The feud lasted for 10 minutes, but encapsulated an entire season of TV. "I didn't enjoy it," Behar told me. "I thought people were complicit in making it go on and on." She pointed to staff behind the scenes. "And then the director put up a split screen, which made Rosie very angry."
At the commercial, both O'Donnell and Hasselbeck were so riled up, they had to physically back away from the table. Producers followed Hasselbeck to make sure that she was okay. "After it ended, I said, 'Elisabeth, how's the baby? You've got to calm down'," Shepherd recalled. "Then I was with Rosie. She said, 'I can't take this. I'm so tired of this'."
The tourists in the studio looked frightened. "It was like watching your parents fight," Shepherd said. In the green room, the yelling echoed over the guests, who were waiting to join this act on live TV. "Alicia Silverstone was shaking," said Shepherd, about the Clueless star, who was scheduled to chat about how veganism had made her a calmer person. "She was terrified."
O'Donnell returned to her seat and finished the show as if everything had gone back to normal. How did she manage to do that? "Well, I'm a professional," she said. "I'm an expert at what I do. You want to come to my apartment? There are a lot of awards and accolades."