Rosie O'Donnell On Her Best And Worst Talk Show Guests

By Ashish Shah Published Jul 25, 2026 · Updated 3 days ago

YOU NEED TO KNOW

Rosie O’Donnell named Barbra Streisand her all-time favorite guest during a recent appearance on Sam Pang Tonight.
She separately called Martin Short the best guest to ever appear on The Rosie O’Donnell Show, which ran from 1996 to 2002.
O’Donnell named Keanu Reeves one of her worst guests, recalling his 1997 appearance as difficult to draw out on live television.
She noted Reeves eventually warmed up during the segment and said she still loves him and his films.

Rosie O’Donnell has a clear answer for who stood out most during her six seasons hosting The Rosie O’Donnell Show, and it isn’t one name, it’s three, each for a different reason.

Speaking with Australian host Sam Pang on Sam Pang Tonight, O’Donnell named Barbra Streisand as her all-time favorite guest and Martin Short as the best guest the show ever had. Then, unprompted, she added a third category entirely: her worst guest.

“One of the worst, who, I love the guy, but he’s not good on talk shows: Keanu Reeves,” O’Donnell told a visibly surprised Pang and studio audience.

She recalled his 1997 appearance specifically, describing a guest who struggled to expand on simple questions during a live broadcast that couldn’t be edited or retaped.

“He’s so sweet, he looks gorgeous, I love all his movies, but he would not answer a question,” she said. “I’d say, ‘So, Keanu, how’s it going? How are you feeling?’ ‘Good.’… We were live.

We couldn’t retape. I finally said after like three minutes, ‘You know, Keanu, it is a talk show. You have to talk.'”

O’Donnell was quick to soften the story rather than leave it as a takedown. “But he did come back, and he got the hang of it,” she said.

“But he’s a lovely man and a good-hearted guy, so I don’t wanna throw him under the bus.” She also noted she’d considered naming a different guest for that category.

Actor Tom Selleck, referencing a well-documented on-air clash the two had over gun policy following the 1999 Columbine shooting, but chose Reeves instead as the less contentious answer.

The series hosted an enormous range of guests across its six seasons, including George Clooney and Toni Braxton on its debut episode, along with recurring appearances from actors like Delta Burke, who appeared on the show multiple times between 1996 and 2001 while promoting various projects during that stretch of her career.

None of O’Donnell’s recent comments to Pang referenced Burke specifically, and no other current reporting connects Burke to any “most memorable guest” distinction; her multiple appearances are well documented, but they exist independently of O’Donnell’s favorite, best, and worst rankings.

The show also had a brief, well-documented revival in March 2020, when O’Donnell brought it back for a one-off coronavirus fundraiser special that raised more than $600,000 for the Actors Fund, according to reporting from Forbes and Variety at the time.

That revival gave modern audiences a fresh look at the format decades after its original run ended, and it’s part of why the show continues to resurface in interviews and retrospective coverage today.

Streisand and Short’s appearances on the original show aren’t in dispute; both were documented guests during its run.

But O’Donnell’s specific framing of them as her favorite and best came directly from this recent Sam Pang Tonight interview, not from any contemporaneous 1990s coverage.

As of this writing, no other outlet has published additional detail expanding on either comment.

What’s confirmed comes entirely from O’Donnell’s own words in this recent, on-record interview: Streisand as her favorite, Short as the best, and Reeves, delivered with clear affection, as her pick for worst.

Nothing in currently available reporting supports a claim that Delta Burke, or any other guest, was ever named her “most memorable,” and any version of this story built around that premise isn’t backed by what O’Donnell has actually said.