“I had it tattooed on my wrist so that I would never forget, that it would remind me. And I thought she’d be very touched … she didn’t give two sh*ts.”
Rosie O’Donnell revealed that she got a tattoo of the word “they” to help her remember the pronouns of her nonbinary-identifying teenage daughter, only to accidentally refer to her as “she” while recounting the story.
O’Donnell discussed the tattoo during an appearance on Amy Poehler’s “Good Hang” podcast on Tuesday. She explained that she had struggled to consistently use they/them preferred pronouns when referring to her daughter.
“It’s very hard, honey. And [gender-neutral pronouns] really matters to them and I know it matters to them. And so when they first told me that it was they/them, I tried my best, but I kept saying ‘she,’” she said.
Her daughter Clay, who was previously named Dakota, came out as nonbinary in 2024. O’Donnell said Clay wrote the word “they” on a piece of cardboard and held it up as a reminder when O’Donnell accidentally used “she.” O’Donnell brought the cardboard into a tattoo parlor to get the pronoun tattooed on her arm in her daughter’s handwriting.
“I had it tattooed on my wrist so that I would never forget, that it would remind me. And I thought she’d be very touched … she didn’t give two sh*ts. She could not care less,” O’Donnell said, accidentally misgendering her daughter.
“I just [said she] again in the ‘they’ story! I messed it up!” she immediately said.
O’Donnell adopted her daughter in 2013 with her then-wife, Michelle Rounds. The couple divorced in 2016 and underwent a custody battle over the child, with O’Donnell receiving full custody. Rounds died by suicide in September 2017.
The comedian moved to Ireland with Clay in January of 2025, shortly after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election.