The feud between actress and comedian Rosie O’Donnell and Donald Trump has been given fresh fuel, and a new origin story.

O’Donnell this week opened up about the origins of her hate-hate relationship with Trump, revealing she first met him when she was a guest at his 1993 wedding to Marla Maples.

The 64-year-old star has been involved in a high-profile war of words in recent years with the US President, who has previously described her as “not a great American citizen” and threatened to revoke her US citizenship.

Speaking this week on the Bleep! with Ana Navarro podcast, O’Donnell said she was invited to Trump’s wedding by Broadway actor Jason Opsahl, who has since died.

“He was a leading man with Marla in Will Rogers Follies, and then he went to do Grease with me as Kenickie and I was Rizzo,” she said of Opsahl.

“And so he was invited to the wedding. I went as his plus-one.”

O’Donnell said she was initially excited to be going to the event.

“It was like a kick because I thought to myself, ‘This [Trump] is the guy that I grew up watching his planes be repossessed off the runways at LaGuardia, watching him declare bankruptcy all the time, [watching] him arguing with Forbes magazine about that he was richer … but they always said, ‘Sorry, we’re not putting you on the list because we can’t quantify your income’.”

 

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Trump once made a silent, cameo appearance on The Rosie O’Donnell Show, the talk show that ran from 1996 to 2002.

“I waved from my desk and then I never spoke to him,” she recalled. “So, the first time I saw him or was in his presence was at his wedding.”

O’Donnell, who has been living in self-imposed exile in Ireland since Trump began his second term,  described the 80-year-old President as a “grifter”, a “con man”, and a “snake oil salesman”.

“If you grew up on Long Island as I did, or in New York City, you knew this your whole life. This was not a surprise,” she said.

It has previously been suggested that Trump’s dislike of O’Donnell dates back to the 2006 appearance on The View .

In that appearance, O’Donnell said she was bemused by the idea that Trump was seen as a “moral compass” for young Americans after he said he would let troubled beauty queen Tara Conner continue her reign as Miss USA if she agreed to attend rehab.

“He annoys me on a multitude of levels,” the outspoken star said.

“He left the first wife, had an affair, left the second wife, had an affair, had kids both times, but he’s the moral compass for 20-year-olds in America.

“Donald, sit and spin, my friend. I don’t enjoy him.”

To emphasise her joke, O’Donnell pulled her shoulder-length hair across her head to create a mocking version of the Trumpian do.

In the following years, Trump continued to speak disparagingly about O’Donnell.

That included during the first debate of the 2016 US election campaign, when he was asked about referring to women as “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals”.

“Only Rosie O’Donnell,” Trump said.

In another recent podcast, O’Donnell revealed she was considering returning to the US to be closer to her family, adding that “it really does depend on what happens politically in the country”.

–with AAP