After her daughter Chelsea did a harsh tell-all interview with the Daily Mail on Oct. 6, Rosie O’Donnell released a statement calling the situation “heartbreaking.” But a source close to the former View co-host, 53, exclusively tells Us Weekly that things are even worse than they might seem.
Describing O’Donnell as “extremely depressed,” the source adds, “It’s very sad and Rosie doesn’t know how to handle it.”
The insider also added that “Chelsea won’t speak to her.”
It all started when Chelsea, whom O’Donnell and her ex Kelli Carpenter adopted in 1997 when the little girl was age 9 weeks, went missing in late August from the family’s Nyack, N.Y., home. Police found her a short while later with her boyfriend, Steven Sheerer, a 25-year-old convicted heroin dealer she’d met on Tinder.
Chelsea claimed that she returned home from the incident to find her bags packed by O’Donnell.
“Rosie knew I was planning to leave,” Chelsea told the Daily Mail. “That’s why I think she kicked me out.”
She also slammed her adoptive mother for smoking pot in the house (which O’Donnell later said was prescribed for her depression) and having a short fuse with her after she and Carpenter split in 2007.
“That’s when everything started to go downhill and I got sent away,” Chelsea said of her stint in a Utah boarding school for troubled kids at age 13. “Things were good when I was younger, but as I got older, I … didn’t really get along with Rosie.”
The situation is "heartbreaking on every level," O'Donnell's rep told Us previously.
For more details on this tragic story, pick up the new issue of Us Weekly, on stands now.
