Rosie O’Donnell has finally addressed ruining the ending to Fight Club on her talk show back in October 1999 because she thought the movie was tasteless.
The actress turned daytime host saw an early screening of the 20th Century Fox classic thriller and so detested its themes and violence that she proceeded to tell her national audience the big ending twist in hopes the revelation would deter them from buying a ticket.
However, in a recent interview on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show, O’Donnell said not only was there no malice to her actions, but she also did not even realize what she did.
“I was just talking because I didn’t think it was good and the Sixth Sense was out,” she said. “I don’t know. It just annoyed me, the movie. So I was saying the Sixth Sense makes sense, but this one doesn’t make sense because of the thing at the end.”
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To be clear, O’Donnell did not simply allude to a twist on her popular NBC talk show — she gave away the ending.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2019 to celebrate Fight Club turning 20, actor Holt McCallany said he was shocked and livid over the move.
“I just remember being absolutely flabbergasted,” said McCallany, who played a supporting role in the cult classic that stars Brad Pitt and Edward Norton (his character leads the chant: “His name is Robert Paulson”). “I remember being infuriated by her remarks and wondering why she felt the need to do that.”
On the 2000 DVD commentary track for Fight Club, Pitt, who played Tyler Durden, said of O’Donnell, “I guess that is OK she hated it. She was saying, ‘This movie disturbed me,’ she could not sleep for nights. It hit a nerve. It struck some nerve whether she wanted to look at it or not. But the deal was, she gave away the ending on national television. That’s just unforgivable.”
Despite all that blowback, O’Donnell recently said that she did not hear any flack from anyone.
“No one said jack shit to me for a good three, maybe even four years,” O’Donnell said on the SiriusXM show. “And Courtney Love on my show says, ‘Oh, my God, Ed Norton and Brad Pitt are so mad at you for what you did.’ I was like ‘What did I do?’ It was three years later! People sometimes ask me on the internet whether or not I did it. And I did. I didn’t have, like, ‘Oh, my God. I want to hurt these people.’ I just had my normal blathering on about feelings about the movie.”
She continued, “So, apparently I was loathed for a long time by the men in that, possibly still. I guess I ruined it for the people who worked so hard on it, and I should be more careful with what I say in a negative way about a movie. If you don’t like it, just don’t mention it. That would have worked better.”
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