Mom-of-Five Rosie O’Donnell Gushes Becoming a First-Time Grandmother ‘Was Something Really Beautiful’

One of Rosie O’Donnell‘s most memorable moments from the last few months was becoming a first-time grandmother! The 56-year-old comedian opened up about her daughter Chelsea welcoming a beautiful baby girl during a recent appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers and said it was a breathtaking moment for her and her family.

“It was something really beautiful,” Rosie said. “It’s very trite, but it’s what everyone says — when you’re a grandparent, it’s like [having] a baby times a million. And that’s what it felt like.” Chelsea named her little girl Skylar Rose and although Rosie arrived a little too late to see Skylar’s birth on Tuesday, December 18, she told host Seth Meyers that she was “there right after.” 

“I flew right in,” she said. But meeting baby Skylar still couldn’t take Rosie’s mind off of her friend, Penny Marshall, who had sadly died just one day earlier. “It was a big, big heartbreak when she died, and then my granddaughter was born the next day,” Rosie recalled. “So I got the call that she had passed, and then I got the call [about my granddaughter].”

Getting those two calls made Rosie feel both sorrow and joy at the same time. “It reminded me about the whole circle of life, and to remember every great thing that I had with her and that she really did give me a film career,” she gushed about her late friend. “I’ll be eternally grateful.”

Rosie has more blessings to celebrate, too. She was recently able to repair her once-estranged relationship with Chelsea, who once ran away from home as a teenager. “I think with my relationship with my daughter, Chelsea, it really has [gotten stronger] because we went through some really public troubled times,” Rosie admitted to Seth. “She’s doing better now and we’re both communicating with each other.”