`It's Been an Interesting Year,' Rosie O'Donnell Says

Jun 03, 10:10 PM

Current Headlines: NEW YORK _ The on-air spat that prompted Rosie O'Donnell to quit "The View" _ aww, it was only a stunt, she joked Sunday.

O'Donnell left the program May 25, three weeks before her slated departure, after a fight with co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck over the Iraq war.

But at a publishing industry event where she plugged her memoir, "Celebrity Detox," O'Donnell quipped that her publisher "orchestrated that whole publicity thing just to get more attention for the book ... brazenly calling up the other hosts, telling them to incite me."

The book, expected out in September, chronicles O'Donnell's return to the public eye on "The View" a year after leaving her own Emmy-winning talk show. She described the memoir as asking: "If celebrity and fame is truly a drug, can one go back to drinking, and sip instead of slug?"

"It's been an interesting year," she told fans at Book Expo to knowing laughter. "We've had to change the epilogue."

The crowd at the Javits Center applauded enthusiastically, with some standing in appreciation.

O'Donnell even alluded to her occasional nemesis, Donald Trump. The two bickered over the mogul's pardon of disgraced Miss USA Tara Conner.

"I don't know if you've heard, I won't be back on `The View' next season," she said. "Instead I'm going to be auditioning for `The Apprentice.' Here's hopin!"

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