Rosie O’Donnell says that Martha Stewart’s time in prison seemed to squeeze the joy of life out of the entertainment maven.
The former talk show host told Page Six that she traveled to Virginia in 2004 to see Stewart while she did time for insider trading — and she asked her what she missed the most while being locked up in the slammer.
O’Donnell said that she fully expected to hear, “My daughter’ or ‘My dogs.’
Instead, Stewart replied, “The flavor of lemon.”
“I would have known that I would have shoved one up my hooter, I could have got one in for you!” O’Donnell quipped.
The comedian said she arranged for a Capri lemon tree from Italy to be waiting on Stewart’s front porch at her Bedford, Conn., estate on the day she returned home.
The mother-of-five revealed that she found it heartbreaking that Stewart had asked her to come to visit as the two weren’t close friends.
“I didn’t really know her very much aside from the celebrity vernacular,” O’Donnell confessed. “She had done my show but I didn’t really know her, we hadn’t been out for dinner, we weren’t exactly friends. Before she left, I wrote her a letter that I thought it was so unfair and if she ever needed anything don’t hesitate and I left my phone number.
“After she was in prison I got a call from her assistant who said she’d like you to come to visit and it kind of broke my heart to think that of all the people she knew she had to invite someone she sort of didn’t know to come all the way to Lynchburg, Virginia. I had to get a plane and go there.”
This Wednesday, the Long Island native will host the annual gala for her charity “Rosie’s Theater Kids” online. The charity brings Broadway to over 1,300 New York City public school kids. Even during the COVID pandemic the organization has tirelessly worked with 18 schools and kept students singing and dancing via zoom.
O’Donnell understands that “it’s a gala in a time of crisis” and notes, “everyone’s trying to do what they can.”