#diane sawyer
On this day in 2002, Rosie O’Donnell came out as a lesbian in an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer.
The interview, which aired as part of an ABC primetime special about gay adoption, capped a weeks-long media tease by O’Donnell, who for years had shied away from discussing her sexuality: In January of that year, O’Donnell played a lesbian during a guest appearance on the sitcom Will & Grace, uttering while in character the words “I’m gay” for the first time in her TV career; and in February, reports that O’Donnell’s forthcoming book, Find Me, would detail her past relationships with women were met with a quiet confirmation of O’Donnell’s sexuality by O’Donnell’s pal Barbara Walters on Walters’ daytime show The View. “She’s gay,” remarked Walters, who’d phoned O’Donnell for her blessing to share the news, on February 14. (Walters’ disclosure would trigger a scuffle with her ABC rival Sawyer, whose interview with O’Donnell wouldn’t air for another month. “[Barbara] was not trying to upstage Diane,” Walters’ rep insisted.) And on February 25, O’Donnell came out publicly during a stand-up set at Caroline’s comedy club in New York, telling a packed room, “I’m a dyke,” before poking fun at Walters’ interview with Ellen DeGeneres’ ex-girlfriend, Anne Heche. “What the hell kind of train wreck was that?” O’Donnell joked. “She couldn’t just say, ‘I was a lesbian for two years, it didn’t work out for me.’ … I don’t know why people make such a big deal about the gay thing.”
But in the Sawyer special, which aired on March 14 and was promoted by ABC with teasing magazine ads (“Why is Rosie, at last, ready to talk?”), O’Donnell was more candid, opening up about her sexuality for the first time. “I remember driving my car when I got my permit and I was alone,” she recounted of coming to terms with her identity, “and I was like, ‘I totally think I’m gay.’ I said it out loud in the car.” O’Donnell also struck back at the critics who’d accused her of trying to hide her sexuality. “I have lived my life very openly and very truthfully,” she argued. “When I was with a man everyone knew who my partner was, and when I was with a woman everyone knew who my partner was. There was never any secret or any hiding.”
“Part of the reason why I’ve never said that I was gay until now was because I didn’t want that adjective assigned to my name for all of eternity,” she added. “Gay Rosie O’Donnell.”
The special also touched on the story of Steven Lofton and Roger Croteau, gay foster parents in Florida whose battle to overturn a law in the state banning gays from adopting children had caught O’Donnell’s attention. After reading about Lofton and Croteau’s story, O’Donnell, who’s a partial resident of Florida and a parent of adopted children, contacted the American Civil Liberties Union to pledge her support. “I said I would like to read their case study,” she said, “and if it is what I believe it is, I would like to do a national interview in support of them and identify myself as a gay parent. They were in shock. The ACLU said, ‘Are you kidding?’ I said I’m not kidding.” (In 2010, a Florida Court of Appeals ruled the law unconstitutional.)
Five years after Ellen DeGeneres’ career-damaging coming out, O’Donnell’s own revelation would be met by a more welcoming public. In a People magazine online poll conducted after the interview, only fifteen percent of respondents said O’Donnell’s sexuality would negatively impact their view of her. Ratings for O’Donnell’s daytime show, scheduled to end its six-year run that May, similarly continued unabated. “There are many, many housewives out there who watch the show and who love me,” O’Donnell told Sawyer of her audience, which averaged 2.5 million viewers. “And people have said to me, ‘You don’t want to do this case, because what if they stop watching.’ I said I have more faith in them than that.”
