Rosie O’Donnell has expressed her regret for making past jokes about Anne Heche in light of the actor’s “horrifying” car crash.
Actor Heche, 53, was taken to hospital last Friday (5 August) with severe burns after she smashed her car into a home in the Mar Vista area of the city, which then caught fire.
She later slipped into a coma and is in a “critical condition”, her representatives told the media.
“So I can’t stop thinking about the Anne Heche accident and how horrifying the whole thing is,” O’Donnell said in a TikTok video. “I’m feeling bad that I made fun of her – [she] was talking to Barbara Walters about having a relationship with space aliens.”
O’Donnell was referring to a 2002 stand-up comedy show in New York where she made fun of Heche’s 2001 interview with veteran journalist Walters.
The comedian also took aim at Heche’s marriage to her then-husband, cameraman Coleman Laffoon, during the show, saying: “What the hell kind of train wreck was that?”
“I wonder if she’s OK,” O’Donnell said in the new TikTok. “I think it’s a miracle that she didn’t kill anyone and thank god, or goddess, or whoever, for that. And I hope she survives, but wow. What a tragic tale.”
Heche is under investigation for DUI, as well as hit and run for the accident, which happened when her car left the road at a T-junction, police say.
No one else was injured in the incident and no arrests have been made in the case, which is ongoing.
The fire at the scene took 59 firefighters one hour to put out.
