How Helen Gurley Brown stopped Rosie O’Donnell from coming out publicly as a lesbian back in 1992

Rosie O’Donnell says she was about to come out publicly as a lesbian a full decade before she actually did so in 2002.

The funny lady, who had just become a big star in the film A League of Their Own, was being interviewed in 1992 by a writer for Cosmopolitan when she was asked if she was a lesbian.

‘He said, “Are you gay?” and I said yes,’ O’Donnell said this week on Mondays With Marlo, a web series hosted by Marlo Thomas.

She said the magazine’s legendary editor, the late Helen Gurley Brown, took out that section of the interview.

‘She was protecting me,’ O’Donnell said. ‘At that time it would have been a huge issue. I think it’s changed a lot.’

‘She added: ‘I didn’t necessarily come out career-wise but everyone in my life knew, everyone in the world knew. It’s just that at that time nobody printed it. It’s much more common (now) and people are much more used to it.’

If O’Donnell’s Cosmo interview had included her revelation, it would have occurred five years before Ellen DeGeneres came out on the cover of Time Magazine.