According to the 64-year-old—who played Ole Golly opposite Trachtenberg’s Harriet in 1996’s Harriet the Spy—she and her former costar made plans to get together multiple times over the years, but Trachtenberg “never showed up.”
“Sometimes at restaurants, other times at my house where we’d had someone prepare the whole meal,” O’Donnell recalled. “I would call her and go, ‘Honey, are you heading over?’ and she’d go, ‘Was that today?’ She was not in good shape. I didn’t think that she would die.”
Looking back, the TV personality admitted that she wishes she “could have done more” for Trachtenberg, who had received a liver transplant prior to her death.
“I tried to help her as much as I could,” she said, “but she was inaccessible toward the end, and it was tragic.”