Rosie O’Donnell Names Her Favorite, Best, and Worst Talk Show Guests

Rosie O’Donnell offered a candid look back at her daytime television career, singling out the standout guests from her six-season run hosting The Rosie O’Donnell Show.

Appearing on Sam Pang Tonight, the veteran comedian named musical icon Barbra Streisand as her all-time favorite guest, while praising comedy legend Martin Short as the absolute best guest to ever grace her stage.

However, O’Donnell caught host Sam Pang and the studio audience off guard when she introduced a third category entirely, naming beloved action star Keanu Reeves as one of her most challenging interviews.

Recalling his 1997 appearance during the height of his Hollywood stardom, O’Donnell explained how the live broadcast format added pressure when a guest gave minimal responses.

She noted that while Reeves was extremely kind and visually stunning, his quiet demeanor presented a unique hurdle for a live, unedited program.

O’Donnell lightheartedly recounted having to remind him mid-segment that he was on a talk show and needed to speak.

She was quick to clarify that there was no lingering bad blood, noting that Reeves later returned to the show and completely found his rhythm for subsequent interviews.

“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 Rosie O’Donnell Show ran from June 10, 1996, to June 27, 2002, taping at NBC’s Studio 8G inside Rockefeller Center in New York City, and produced by O’Donnell’s own KidRo Productions alongside Telepictures and Warner Bros. Television.

The show won five Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Talk Show over its run and was credited by The New York Daily News as the best new syndicated talk show of 1996.

O’Donnell earned the nickname “The Queen of Nice” from Newsweek during this period, a reputation built on a warmer, more relaxed interview style than much of daytime television’s more combative competition at the time.

That reputation is part of what makes her specific callout of Reeves notable: even her one clearly named “worst” guest story ends with her insisting she still likes him personally, consistent with the show’s overall tone.

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.

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