Rosie O’Donnell is still mourning the loss of Michelle Trachtenberg.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JUNE 7: Rosie O’Donnell attends the 79th Annual Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall on June 7, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)
O’Donnell and Trachtenberg starred together in the 1996 film Harriet the Spy, in which O’Donnell played the young star’s nanny.
“It was a tragedy. She was a real child genius who could remember anything, figure out her lines, you could improvise with her, and she was on-call and right there,” O’Donnell recently told Variety.
O’Donnell recalled that Trachtenberg was close to her mother Lana and sister, calling them “a very loving family.”
“Then I think she got into drugs and alcohol and then I lost contact with her,” the 64-year-old said.
07.29.96 Rosie O’Donell and Michelle Trachtenberg in the first Nickolodeon film “Harriet the Spy”
Trachtenberg’s official cause of death was listed as complications of diabetes, but O’Donnell claims the actress had problems with addiction.
“I also called her mother to find out what was going on, and her mother told me what was going on and how long it had been going on,” the “A League of Their Own” star said. “We were supposed to see each other three or four times, but she never showed up – sometimes in restaurants, sometimes at my house, where someone else cooked all the food. I called her and asked: “Honey, are you heading?” and she would ask, “Was that today?”
“She wasn’t in the best shape. I didn’t think she was going to die. Because most people suffer from addiction, their loved ones think they’ll get through it, but you can die from an addiction to drugs or alcohol, and it happens too often and it has to be taken seriously,” O’Donnell said.
O’Donnell continued: “I wish I could have done more. I tried to help her as much as I could, but towards the end she became unavailable and that was tragic.”
Rosie O’Donnell and Michelle Trachtenberg attend the Harriet the Spy charity premiere in New York for Girls Inc. at the Sony State Theater in New York, New York, USA. (Photo by Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)
She compared the situation to the death of Whitney Houston, “where everyone knew what was going on but no one wanted to say anything, and often because the people closest to you work for you when you’re such a large organization and they don’t want to lose their jobs or their money.”
Houston struggled with addiction for years and died from an accidental drowning in 2012.
O’Donnell sympathizes with both women, noting that her own daughter suffered from addiction.
FILE – Michelle Trachtenberg appears at The Art of Elysium’s ninth annual celestial gala in Culver City, Calif., Jan. 9, 2016. (Photo by Rich Fury/Invision/AP, File)
“It’s terrible, and addiction has affected my family as well. I have a daughter who is an addict. She’s been sober for a year and a half and, unfortunately, she’s in prison now, but she was born addicted and never really shook. It’s very serious, and millions of families in America are going through the same thing,” she said.
O’Donnell recently visited her daughter Chelsea in prison, where she remains sober.
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