Rosie O’Donnell touched on her troubled relationship with her daughter Chelsea Alliegro in a speech at the GLAAD Media Awards in NYC on Saturday, May 6.
The former talk show host, who was at the event to present an award to Broadway star Billy Porter, referenced an explosive interview that Alliegro, 19, gave earlier this week to the Daily Mail, in which she claimed O’Donnell was verbally abusive and came after her with a wine bottle.
“Things have been rough in my family in the last week,” O’Donnell, 55, told he audience at the New York Hilton Midtown. “Let’s just say I feel strongly Joan Crawford was framed.” (The late Hollywood star had a tortured relationship with her adopted daughter Christina, which was detailed in her 1978 memoir Mommie Dearest.)
“I have an autistic toddler, she’s 4,” O’Donnell continued. “I would trade every teen in for autistic triplets. Not gonna kill them with a wine bottle.”
As she noticed the audience’s confusion at the reference, she added, “What? Google on the way home.”
Then the former View cohost referenced her long-running feud with President Donald Trump.
“Why am I here, truthfully?” she said. “Well, first of all, I’m still vertical after Satan won. That to me is a major accomplishment for someone who suffers from major depressive disorder.”
O’Donnell also took a photo of the audience members who gave her a standing ovation when she took the stage. “A lot of people have been saying that I never leave my house and that I spend all of my time tweeting mean s–t about 45,” she said. Then she jokingly wrote a text to Trump from the stage: “‘F–k you, Donald. From the gays.’ Sent!”
O’Donnell commented on her daughter’s interview with a long response to the Daily Mail. In it she stated that Alliegro “is mentally ill and has been in and out of hospitals most of her life.”
In August 2015 O’Donnell tweeted that her daughter, then 17, was missing from their Nyack, New York, home and asked for help in finding her. Alliegro was located almost two weeks later in New Jersey, with a man she had met through Tinder.
Shortly afterwards, when Alliegro turned 18, she left O’Donnell’s home once more, to live with her birth mother in Wisconsin.
Alliegro, who is one of four children O’Donnell shares with ex-wife Kelli Carpenter, reunited with her adoptive mom in June 2016, but the reconciliation appeared to be short-lived.
The teen stated in her May 2 interview with the Daily Mail that she secretly married boyfriend Nick Alliegro, 31, last July after she found out she was pregnant. She subsequently miscarried.
O’Donnell shared a cryptic post on Instagram on Wednesday, May 3, that appeared to address her daughter’s miscarriage and claims of abuse.
“i struck back / when u kicked my chest / as i knelt by ur stoic stare / begging you to speak,” she wrote.
“r u up? All this time – just minutes away … miscarriage? no idea – him still – sad really – HE put u out – more than once – should i brace for impact – u got more to say – make a home Chelsea – this one u never liked,” she captioned the post, ending it with a broken heart emoji.
