Rosie O’Donnell Gets Serious – Vanity Fair

I think it was really smart of David and the casting people to have a woman in that role, because the character of Julian has a lot of dysfunction with the women in his life. No one ever thought, when watching American Gigolo, what made him become a gigolo? The show deals with the grooming and the sexual trafficking of young boys, which you don’t see talked about too much.

American Gigolo’s your second series adaptation of a classic film this year: You also have a guest role in Prime Video’s A League of Their Own. You’ve said that in the original film, Doris was queer in your mind, whether Penny Marshall let you run with that or not. How did it feel showing up on this League of Their Own set, which is so unabashedly queer?

Well, first of all, to walk in at 60 years old and see my life 30 years ago, all the women in our outfits and all the mitts—it was just such a flashback. But I have to say that I loved doing it. I loved watching these women at the beginning of their careers. I really think that the gay part was so beautifully told. It was wonderful to see it.

When we did the movie, there was that one scene [where] I’m on the bus: “I never felt like a real girl or even a girl, but now I see there’s a lot of us, we’re all okay.” To me, that was her saying she found her tribe, right? There were gay women or athletic women or women like her, and my character, I thought, was in love with Mae and didn’t maybe know how to express it. But it was 1991 when we shot it, or 1990, and the times were different. You don’t realize until you’re sort of faced with the new show what it could have been.

I’m so touched by the fact that [cocreator and star] Abbi Jacobson was a young woman who was figuring out her sexuality watching that movie, and feeling like there was something missing. [Shooting the film,] when we met the real players, who were in their 70s—80s, some of them—they would say, “Oh, this is my roommate, Betsy.” I’m like, “Oh, how long have you been roommates?” “Oh, 27 years.”

So it was definitely a part that was left out. When I did that scene, Penny said, [O’Donnell puts on a Penny Marshall voice] “Rosie, don’t do it so gay.” I was like, “Well, I’m just doing the words as they’re written.” “Well, do it again, but don’t think of it so gay.” “Okay, Pen.” But I did it the same way each time, because that was the way it was real to me.

1991 or ’90, when we were shooting, there was no Will & Grace, there was no Ellen being out. I don’t think anyone thought, Oh, well, they’re really leaving out the gay stuff. Brokeback Mountain hadn’t happened yet. There were lots of cultural events for the gay community that we hadn’t yet lived, and so it just touches me to see what Abbi has done and how she incorporated the reality of the Black women in the league and the gay women in the league and kind of opened it up to a 2022 worldview.