Rosie Returns To TV Talk On Oprahs Network

First Published: October 7, 2011 9:06 AM EDT Credit: OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network CHICAGO, Ill. -- Caption Rosie ODonnell in a promotional photo for her Oprah Winfrey Network Show The Rosie Show It took Oprah Winfrey to lure Rosie ODonnell back to TV talk. Nearly a decade after she left her successful daily daytime show to take care of her children, ODonnells The Rosie Show premieres Monday on the Oprah Winfrey Network. ODonnell made the decision after Winfrey visited her home for what became a four-hour meeting. I said I would want to carry the torch of what she had done so well, ODonnell said in an interview as she sat in her office at Harpo Studios in Chicago, pictures of pets and children on the shelves behind her desk. ODonnell tapes in the same space where Winfrey taped The Oprah Winfrey Show before it ended in May after 25 years. They chatted about ODonnells life and why she wanted to go back to television, ODonnell said. At the end she said, Lets do this. I said, Lets do this. I feel sort of a responsibility to reach for her standard of excellence, ODonnell said about Winfrey. The two women have lots in common: Both have had self-named magazines; both say they would be teachers if they werent in entertainment; both shared the Daytime Emmy for Best Talk show Host in 1998; and now both will share the same cable network and audience. It seems a good fit for ODonnell, a 49-year-old mother of four whose show-starting monologues joke about menopause, weight gain and depression. She promises longer, in-depth chats with a single celebrity after little or no preinterviewing by her staff for the hourlong show. We have to evolve it in a way thats authentic, said ODonnell, who is friends with mega-celebrities such as Madonna and Tom Cruise. She said her endearing, fanlike curiosity about the famous has changedover the years. At almost 50 my interest in celebrity is how it affects our culture, she said. ODonnell will take questions from the audience. There may be a musical guest and each show has a game show segment, ODonnells heart still broken after losing The Price Is Right hosting job to Drew Carey. At the end of every show were having our own Price Is Right, ODonnell tells her studio audience during a taping before a large lighted game called Flash-O-Matic descends from the rafters. The show has signature Rosie-style charm. She walks around the set during commercial breaks to chat with her audience. There are giveaways and a colorful burst of confetti to finish everything off. Winfrey has been lending her celebrity to promote ODonnell. The pair appears together in preview spots and Internet videos, and ODonnell joined Winfrey on the cover of O magazine. Its the talk-show queens efforts to bolster her struggling namesake station. ODonnell calls OWNs January debut a soft launch and said she considers this Mondays premieres of The Rosie Show followed by Winfreys Oprahs Lifeclass the networks hard launch. ODonnell is on at 7 p.m. EDT leading into Winfreys prime-time program at 8 p.m. EDT. Oprahs Lifeclass will have Winfrey share her feelings about old segments from The Oprah Winfrey Show. There is a certain amount of pressure to build OWNs audience, said Bill Carroll, a television syndication expert with Katz Television Group in NY. Rosie has to come on and be a little wiser, a little older, but certainly has to be the upbeat Rosie because shes on Oprahs network, Carroll said. It needs to be fun and it needs to be some celebrity and it needs to be empowering. If you can put those together then youll have a show that attracts the Oprah/Rosie audience. Many viewers more recent memories of ODonnell arent from her 1990s show, but from dust-ups with other celebrities. She argued with Tom Selleck about gun control and Donald Trump about Miss USA. When ODonnell was on The View in 2007 she and Elisabeth Hasselbeck had a confrontation about the Iraq war. Thats not what shes going for this time around, ODonnell said. Its not a political show, ODonnell said. Its not an antagonistic show. I do have a strong political voice and in some ways that will come out but thats not the entree. Winfrey has called ODonnell a great competitor turned partner and friend. The new sign outside Harpo Studios reads: The Rosie Show and the former home of The Oprah Winfrey Show. Im not a boss, Winfrey said when the sign was unveiled last month. Were partners. We collaborate on everything. You dont tell Rosie what to do. ODonnell talks about Winfrey with a sense of awe, saying shes watched Winfrey for half of her life. I believe in her, ODonnell said. I believe in who she is. I believe in her message and I have for 25 years. Winfrey only offered two pieces of advice, ODonnell said: to be herself and not to resist anything. Luckily my age is on my side for this, ODonnell said. I think I have a much better understanding of who I am, what Im doing and why. A native NYer, ODonnell has made a home for herself on Chicagos North Side and has been sampling the citys culture. Shes tried Chicago-style pizza and taken a tour of the Grant Park area around Buckingham Fountain. She calls Chicago epically beautiful, although shes worried about the winters. I feel like Im getting ready for the frozen tundra, she said. (Copyright 2011 by Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed) Copyright 2011 by NBC Universal, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.