How Abbi Jacobson Got Rosie O’Donnell for A League of Their Own

Abbi and Rosie began having conversations about the show when Abbi started working on it back in 2018.

“I very nervously told her what I was doing,” Abbi said. “She said, ‘This is going to be like a queer version?,’ which I wasn’t fully labeling it that, but it kind of is. She was like, ‘Well, good luck with that!'”

Whatever hesitancy Rosie might have had at the start was washed away when Abbi eventually asked her to come onboard. 

“I reached out to her and she was down to do it pretty much immediately,” Abbi revealed, “which was so exciting.”

While Abbi said they didn’t want to overload the series with appearances from actors from the original film—which also starred Geena Davis, Tom Hanks, Madonna and Lori Petty—she explained that Rosie’s inclusion meant something on a deeper level.

“Season one, we weren’t trying to do that many cameos. We just really wanted to differentiate the show from the film,” the Broad City co-creator said. “But Rosie felt like the one that really felt special because we are telling so many of these queer stories that weren’t told in the film.”