Rosie O’Donnell Slams ‘Mean’ Kelly Ripa

Rosie O’Donnell is opening up, for the first time, about the 2006 incident with Kelly Ripa and Clay Aiken. In Us Weekly’s exclusive excerpt of Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of The View Opens a New Window. , O’Donnell, 57, details what happened behind the scenes.

In November 2006, Aiken joined Ripa as a cohost on Live With Regis and Kelly, and the two did not hit it off. At one point, he put his hand over her mouth and she said, “I don’t know where that’s been, honey!” O’Donnell responded to Ripa’s comment the next day on The View, saying it was “a homophobic remark.” She added, “If that was a straight man, if that was a cute man, if that was a guy that she didn’t question his sexuality, she would’ve said a different thing.”

In the new tell-all book, written by Ramin Setoodeh, O’Donnell explains why she defended Aiken:

A few days before he went on Live he had been a guest on The View. “He had come into my dressing room, crying about whether or not to come out. And I sat down with him and I talked to him. He was inching his way out in the way so many born-again Southern Christians have to. I hugged him. Not only do I feel the twenty-years-older mother thing, I feel the twenty-years-old younger-gay thing.” When she saw Ripa on TV that day, Rosie couldn’t bottle her anger.

“So I had just held a crying boy and then watched him be gay bashed by Kelly Ripa,” Rosie said.

After the show, Rosie heard from Aiken. First, she said that he thanked her for defending him. And second: “I didn’t know how to come out, so you just did it.”

As he left her dressing room, Rosie promised Aiken a shield of protection. “Nobody is going to ask you about this on the show,” she said. “And if they do, just let this d-ke take care of it.”

But Aiken had no idea that Rosie would make his sexual orientation a talking point after the Ripa incident. “I didn’t see it the same way that she did,” he said. “The truth is she outed me in a way, because I had not been out yet. When she said the words, ‘If that was a straight man,’ she was confirming that she knew that I wasn’t. That was the worst day of my life. I don’t think I’d had a moment more devastating to me. I remember feeling like shit that day and totally defeated. But I definitely wasn’t mad at her.” Aiken said that Rosie later helped him officially come out on the cover of People in 2008, by introducing him to her publicist.

“I think Kelly Ripa is mean and she doesn’t like me, and she has never wanted to discuss what happened. She wanted to have this weird feud.” Rosie said that under normal circumstances, she would have bonded with Ripa through her All My Children lineage. “She’s the girl from Pine Valley. She and her husband met on the show. That’s my f–king sweet spot. I would have loved her my whole life.” The two never mended fences after the View incident. “I see her at concerts sometimes,” Rosie said. “She just looks away.”

In the end, Rosie was most upset with The View executive producer for connecting the call. The show hadn’t done that before. “Bill Geddie thinks that makes good TV—two women fighting.” Rosie confronted them about it. “I said, ‘Excuse me Bill, that would be the first time that you sabotaged me live on the air. It will not happen again. If it does happen again, I will not be on the show.” Rosie paused for dramatic effect. “When it happened again, I left.”

Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of The View will be released on Tuesday, April 2.

Priyanka Chopra Said She Nearly Got Cold Feet Before Marrying Nick Jonas

On a recent episode of “Watch What Happens Live,” host Andy Cohen asked if Jonas cried when he saw Chopra in her custom Ralph Lauren dress. “He cried. I cried. He cried,” Chopra started. “It was just like, it happened so fast. And I had a freak-out moment right before I walked down the aisle. I was about 40 minutes late, because I was just like, ’75-foot train. Do I even know what I’m doing?’ Like, a full freak-out moment. But then that door opened, and I saw his face, and…” Chopra then motioned a tear going down her cheek with her finger. Seeing Jonas was enough to assure her she absolutely was making the right choice marrying him.

She also told Cohen that they did go over budget with their wedding, planned the entire thing in just a month and a half, and that Jonas cried the most during the vow exchange.

Nicolas Cage files for annulment 4 days after getting married

According to court documents, Entertainment Tonight is reporting that actor Nicolas Cage has filed for annulment, four days after getting married. Cage and wife Erika Koike began dating last April and applied for a marriage license and tied the know on Saturday. The actor has requested a divorce if an annulment isn’t possible.

Nicolas Cage has filed for an annulment four days after getting married, according to a report.

The “Face/Off” star filed for an annulment from wife Erika Koike on Wednesday. Entertainment Tonight reported, citing court documents.

The court record also shows that the 55-year-old actor has requested a divorce if an annulment isn’t possible.

According to ET, the former couple — who started dating last April — applied for a marriage license and tied the knot on Saturday in Las Vegas.

This is Cage’s fourth marriage. He previously was married to Patricia Arquette from 1995 to 2001.

Following their split, he started dating Lisa Marie Presley. The pair wed in August 2002, but they filed for divorce just three months after their secret wedding in Hawaii, according to People.

Cage went on to marry Alice Kim, a waitress working at a restaurant he frequented, in 2004. They had a child together named Kal-El. Kal-El was Cage’s second child after Weston, who was born in 1990 to the actor’s then-girlfriend Christina Fulton.