“My first big press conference in Washington!” exulted Rosie O’Donnell, as she took the lectern in the Russell Senate Office Building Wednesday and looked out on the dozen-plus photographers who came to snap her picture. “I feel really nervous, like there should be a scandal attached.”
But fear not, as she added, “I swear I didn’t do anything.”
O’Donnell’s cause? A foster care reform bill introduced by Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y. As a child, O’Donnell explained, she “made a deal with God that if he let me become rich and famous” then she’d spend her life working for children.
But that’s not her only connection to the cause. She’s been a foster mom since 1998, and appears in the recent Lifetime movie “America,” about a teen who navigates the foster care system.
Lifetime Executive Vice President Meredith Wagner also pointed out O’Donnell would appear on upcoming episodes of the network’s “Drop Dead Diva,” although she said O’Donnell was “not a diva.”
“I’m not dead, either,” O’Donnell clarified.
Photo: Carrie Devorah
