Ro, Ro, Ro their boat! Rosie and Kelli O'Donnell take their family--and hundreds like theirs--on an R Family cruise to equal rights and a whole lotta love and fun.

It's a nice surprise to walk into Rosie O'Donnell's house. Located in a quiet town along the Hudson in upstate New York, the residence is discreetly set back from the street, but it's no celebrity fortress. It's a place to rake leaves and toss a football and eat ice cream--a real home for a real family.

It feels right that Rosie and Kelli have invited me here to talk about All Aboard! Rosie's Family Cruise, airing April 6 on HBO. The documentary, which follows 2004's inaugural R Family cruise, is a family affair, with all four O'Donnell kids on deck beside their famous moms. Indeed, when Rosie and Kelli O'Donnell attended the world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, they took the kids as well. "We wanted them to have a full understanding of what it was and why we did it," Rosie says. "Because it really meant a lot to them, this cruise, and the movie. They're in it, and it's gonna be forever, you know?"

Inside the O'Donnells' house, light pours in from windows facing the river. Oversize chairs flank a massive coffee table neatly piled with picture books and playthings. Blond and gracious, Kelli O'Donnell blends right into the sunbeams. My eye shoots toward the dark knot of energy sitting quiet on the couch. Rosie O'Donnell, in sweatpants and socks, gives off major mojo.

The force field turns out to be a crackling intelligence. For the next hour, Kelli at her side, Rosie is candid, reflective, and realistic about her journey to date. The 44-year-old comedian who once wrote a memoir called Find Me now seems to be a happy woman who knows just where she's going.

Her millions of fans know all about Rosie's turbulent life. (On her blog, they often write her about their own.) Devastated at age 10 when her mother died of breast cancer, Rosie learned early how to give back as good as she got. She struck gold as a grown-up with The Rosie O'Donnell Show, which ran from 1996 until she left in 2002. But she was clear that building her own family was more important. When she came out publicly in 2002, it was as a gay parent in support of adoption by gays. Even before Rosie's bruising 2003 lawsuit with publisher Gruner + Jahr over the rights to Rosie magazine, the O'Donnells were brainstorming about a new travel company to serve gay families.

R Family may turn out to be Rosie O'Donnell's biggest hit yet. But it's not a solo show. In the next hour I'll learn how Rosie came to build her nest with the former Miss Kelli Carpenter of Baton Rouge, La.--and how these two women from opposite points on the map found such strength together that they had enough left over to float the biggest cruise ship on the ocean.

All Aboard follows a number of really personal, emotional stories. What was it like to have people filming this cruise?

Rosie: At first we were worried that it would taint the experience for the passengers. [When HBO's John Hoffman and Sheila Nevins suggested making the film] we still didn't know what the cruise would be. We didn't even know if we were gonna sell a cabin!

Kelli: Also, it was our very first time to do this. To have cameras filming and boom mikes hanging over us, it was a little unnerving.

Rosie: But I'm thrilled that they did it, because I didn't get to experience the cruise fully until I saw the documentary. When you see the movie you really realize the impact that this had for people, and it's very touching.

How did you actually make this cruise happen?

Kelli: The idea's been around for a long time, but it takes more than just an idea. There's a lot of pieces that had to come together to make it work. It was really a group effort, wouldn't you say?

Rosie: Yeah. It was as simple as we went to Provincetown [with Gregg Kaminsky, former executive with Atlantis Cruises] and we saw family week, and at dinner I was like, "It would be amazing if we could make a thing like this for gay people," and Gregg said, "Well, you could. It would have to be a cruise, because you have to provide a safe environment." I'm like, "Could it be a viable business?" "Yeah." I said, "OK, let's do it." 'Cause Gregg knew how to run it and Kelli knew how to market it. I just wrote my name on the check to rent the ship. I insisted on getting the best ship there was. And to try to get free stuff for everyone and get good talent, those were my responsibilities. They did everything else.

What's some of the free stuff that you got?

Rosie: It was very hard year 1. We weren't organized yet to have swag, so I had to put it together in a kind of haphazard way. Most of it was me buying it on eBay at 3 in the morning on Surplus.com. I wanted there to be a gift on the bed every night--not something big, but like a little teddy bear or R Family hat.

You were on eBay buying this stuff?.

Rosie: Yeah. I bought things like light-up necklaces that were blinking with hearts. We had guys on Kelli's crew at the pirate party giving away, like, little pirate dolls, and there was a day at the fair where you could win something, and everybody wins.

Kelli: [Now] we have sponsors, and there's free giveaways. We had Volvo, Mitchell Gold.

Rosie: It was easier year 2, because there had been publicity. It'll be easier now. We don't want it to be gross excess. We just wanted to make it as friendly and fun and kid-focused as we could.

Everyone in the film is so happy. Did anybody not have a good time?

Kelli: Out of 1,600 passengers we had the first year, we had two people that had complaints. The crew said it's the first time they've ever done a trip that their mailboxes were not filled with messages. They also said they'd never been on a trip with so many well-behaved children. I do think that gay parents are different [that way], because you work really hard to become a parent.

Rosie: All those children were wanted, prepared for, and fought for, in many ways.

I was struck by all the gay-parenting lingo--passengers talking about their donors and their surrogates. If I were on the religious right, I might think, If gay parenting were natural, these people wouldn't need to do all this stuff.

Rosie: Well, it depends what you want to focus on. You could focus just as easily on all the children there who were taken out of foster care, out of failed heterosexual families that weren't able to care for kids that were thrown away and unwanted. The vast majority of gay families come through adoption.

But can you imagine that people might have a negative reaction?

Kelli: Straight couples use surrogacy also, when they can't have children. Does that make their families unnatural? I don't think so.

In Nassau you encountered a group of religious protesters. At one point in the film they're singing a hymn, and the camera pans over to show the Metropolitan Community Church minister from your own cruise, standing apart and singing the same hymn. She was terrific.

Rosie: She was. Although I did find it odd, while watching the film of the pretest--which I didn't see 'cause I didn't get off the beat-that at the end she was singing with the people with the signs of GO TO HELL, HOMOS.

I thought it was great.

Kelli: I did too. She was trying to create the bridge to show that gay people can be Christians too. They're saying that Christians don't believe that gay people should exist, and she's saying, "Here I am. I know the same hymns you know. You can't use the very core of what I believe in against us."

We've been reporting a lot lately about gay people taking back our investment in religion.

Kelli: Well, I also feel like we're not gonna have any advancement politically until the religious groups accept us and understand that we can be Christians also. The religions right and politically the right wing, they're all so merged.

Rosie: Kelli can speak more to the whole Christian upbringing. I don't really know why they hate us [laughs]. I was raised Catholic, and we didn't have any hellfire-damnation gay-hating. It was one mass, the same thing every week. I had it memorized by the time I was 7. There was none of what Kelli went through.

What denomination were you raised in, Kelli?

Kelli: We went to a Christian Bible church in Baton Rouge. I'm the oldest of four; I think [my being gay] was just a very scary thing for my parents. I think they didn't know what to do, they thought it was fixable, and they thought they could change me.

How did they find out?

Kelli: They read my journals.

Rosie: They not only read them, they Xeroxed them and put them on display on a king-size bed in a hotel room after she was a freshman in college and called her for a meeting.

Like an intervention?

Rosie: Exactly. They did an intervention, more than one.

Kelli: I'm an official graduate of Homosexuals Anonymous.

Talk more about that, for heaven's sake.

Kelli: Um--sure. Basically, I was a freshman at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and they confronted me and said either I get help or they wouldn't pay for me to go to college. And for some reason I had the wherewithal not to say "Go jump in a lake" and walk out and never get my college degree. I just thought it was my way to freedom: If I do what they want me to do now, then I really never have to be held to their money or their beliefs ever again. So I went through the program for four years while I was in college. I was a Tri Delt at SMU, but I had a whole secret life. I had a pretend boyfriend who was also gay. We'd go to all my mixers and then we would go out to the gay bars afterward.

And after graduation?

Kelli: I got a good job and never talked to my parents about anything I was doing.

Rosie: She moved away.

Kelli: Actually, right before I met Ro, I went home for Thanksgiving. And all of a sudden I look around my house, and it's not just my regular family members, it's like my real father is there with his new wife, and my entire family is in one room at one time. And I think, This is so weird. And all of a sudden my stepfather says, "Can everybody come have a seat in the living room?"

Oh, God.

Rosie: She was an adult woman. What were you, 30?

Kelli: Yeah, 29, 30. And so we all go sit down, and I think he's gonna make an announcement that somebody's sick or something. And then they all turn around and look at me, and he says, "Kelli, we're all here because we love you." And they went around the room and talked about the impact of my gayness on their life and said they loved me and wanted me to get help.

Rosie: And the best line is that, if she was a drug addict--Both: They would do the same thing!

That's terrible.

Rosin: When she told me that story is when I fell in love. It's like a movie. That the parents would never accept her, like she was an alien creature--I had never met anyone like that.

Kelli: We fell in love, and I told her that my parents would never be able to be a part of our lives.

And how did Rosie handle that?

Kelli: Well, Ro had to go down to New Orleans for work, and she said, "Can I call your parents and just have dinner?" I was like, "Sure, but don't say anything!"

Rosie: So I went and met them. Her mother had a couple of glasses of wine, her dad was there. I said, "OK, I just wanted to tell you that you may not be too thrilled about Kelli and the gay thing, but she and I are in love and we're gonna be together. With all due respect, you have to get with the program and respect our family, and then we'll gladly include you." And her mother says, "Well, you know who the most important person is in Kelli's life?" I said, "Who's that?" She said, "Jesus Christ." I said, 'You know, it's funny--she's never mentioned him. Maybe she lost his e-mail address."

I love it!

Rosie: The truth is, that's where we started. But they have come 360 degrees and then some.

Kelli: We can't get rid of them now. [Anne laughs.]

Rosie: They went on the cruise. Her mother went to the PFLAG meeting on the cruise and spoke. She didn't want to. I said, "Come on, Melanie." She's like [imitates Southern accent], "I don't know, Ro--I mean, I'm not gonna say anything." I said, "OK, just come with me." So we went there, and I said, "And you know, Kelli's mother is here today. Come on up." And she did--give her credit. The turn that she's made is pretty phenomenal.

Sounds like it all started when you made them talk about it.

Rosie: Well, it was OK in their family to berate Kelli for who she was. It was OK to say that there was something wrong with her, that it made their lives harder to have a gay sister. I said, "Well, there's a new rule. You're not allowed to be mean to Kelli. I don't care how hard your life is because she's gay. Do you know how hard it is for our life that you're Republican?" [Anne laughs]

But I have to say, her parents raised an exceptional group of adults. They love each other, and they're there for each other. When the five siblings in my family fight, there's no mother like Melanie to call up and say, "I've had enough. This is ridiculous, and you're all coming to Thanksgiving." She makes all of us go away once a year on this family trip. The first year, I thought I would blow my brains out. But now the kids look forward to it every year. They know their cousins.

Family. There you go.

Rosie: And much to my surprise--after I heard those stories, I was expecting Satan horns to pop out during dinner and her head to spin around--[Kelli's mom] was just a mother trying to learn to love her daughter who grew up different than she was. That's the struggle of every parent. I look at our 10-year-old sometimes and go, "Don't you understand, you need to behave better? Do you not get the point of this?"

Rosie, obviously for a while you weren't out. And you picked a time, a moment to come out. You picked an issue, adoption in Florida.

Rosie: The ACLU lawsuit against the state of Florida for unconstitutionally preventing homosexuals from adopting the foster children that they raise.

And the suit was unsuccessful.

Rosie: Sadly, the state I love most in the country--I love Miami so much--is one of the most backward. There are more than 3,000 kids available for adoption in Florida today, and families willing and ready to take them are not allowed because they're gay. And who's suffering? The children. When I read about this lawsuit, when we had the experience of being discriminated against with our foster child, that's when God tapped me on the shoulder and said, "You're in, kid." So I went and did it. It wasn't such a big deal. It didn't affect my career, to toll you the truth.

Really?

Rosie: Not at all. It was the lawsuit from the magazine, which used the gay thing, in a way, to try to infiltrate the fortress, to get to the gold in the O'Donnell kingdom. They tried to come in through that vulnerable door of gayness. If I wasn't gay, there's no way they would have sued me. I think they thought that I would fold. People were like, "You're already vulnerable. You told everyone you're gay. People are against you now. Now we're gonna attack." [Shrugs] That was the thing that I think did the most damage to my image, or to my public persona. But I wouldn't have done it another way, 'cause I didn't have an option.

You talk about fame as being like Mount Everest. It's not just getting up there, you have to live through getting down.

Rosie: Right. Because no one, unless you die, stays that famous forever. If Elvis and Marilyn were alive today, who knows where they'd be? They could be at a lounge somewhere in Vegas.

At the height of your fame, was there a time when you'd say, don't you dare tell me no? What got you out of it?

Rosie: To say that you are not a narcissist if you're a celebrity is a lie. It comes with the territory. You have to fight against it. You have to try to have people in your life who will tell you no. When we first started to date, I was teasing Kelli, saying something like "I'm the boss of you," right? And she said to me, "Don't you have enough people to be the boss of?." And I was like, "Whoa!"

Kelli, when you met, what attracted you to Rosie?

Kelli: It's funny, because I was hesitant. The fame thing was not on the plus list for me, 'cause I felt like it would overtake my life--

Rosie: As it has. [They laugh]

Kelli: But we were set up on a date, and I thought, Might as well go.... Then we talked, and she was one of the smartest people I'd ever spoken to. She wasn't like she was on television. There was a quieter, darker quality. There were many more pieces to the pie.

And how about you, Rosie? What attracted you to Kelli?

Rosie: Look at her! [Big laugh] It was her eyes! When I met her, I thought, Oh, my God, look at those green eyes! It was like the snake in Jungle Book [Rosie mimes hypnotic spirals in the air]. And she was smart and fun and adorable. I loved too that she was so not into the show business thing.

Kelli: I felt like I was my own little rock star in my own little world! I was pretty content in my life, and I think that's what works about our relationship now. We're both loners in our own way.

How do the two of you make time for romance?

Both: We have date nights. [They laugh]

Rosie: We have date nights in the city--we have a one-bedroom apartment in the city. We were there last night. We'll spend a day or two every two weeks or so. Believe me, four children, it's hard. You have to work to keep your relationship vibrant and alive.

You've made such a success with R Family--

Kelli: We've just announced our first winter cruise in 2007, during the February Presidents' Day week. A beautiful, brand-new Norwegian Cruise Lines ship, going out of Miami doing the eastern Caribbean. Then we're doing Alaska this summer.

Do you see yourself in the R Family business for the future?

Kelli: This business is great because it applies to my family, so I feel passionate about it. Gregg really runs the day-to-day piece of the business and I participate as much as I can.

Do you two think about more children for you?

Kelli: [Instantly] No.

Rosie: I do, but she wants to kill me at the concept. We made an agreement--and it is true, four is more than enough. [Laughs] And when you get to five and six you need a special car. And we have this program in the city, Broadway Kids--

Tell me a little about that.

Kelli: We go into the highest-poverty-level schools in Manhattan and bring them a full theater program to all the fifth-graders across the board. That includes music, dancing, and everything.

Rosie: We just bought a building on 45th Street to make a full theater arts school with homework stations, with counselors, with lockers, with showers.

Often when people don't come out, they say, "I don't want to be a poster child." In coming out, have you become poster children?

Rosie: Yes. But I don't mind being a poster child for being part of a gay family. My struggle was never being gay. Everyone says, Well, you weren't out. But in '96, '95, I sat down and told the entire board of Warner Bros., "You know I'm gay, right?" Mind you, I'm not blameless. When I said how I love Tom Cruise--Angelina Jolie also gives me a little bit of the willies, but I didn't say that part.

Have you ever been sorry that you came out?

Rosie: Nawwww. No way.

Kelli. I wouldn't have it any other way, because if you have shame, then your kids are gonna feel it.

Rosie: Sometimes I wish I did it sooner. But I also know that you can't get there until you get there. Like that Joni Mitchell song. You can't scream at a rose to bloom. For me, this was the timing that was right. And I have never regretted it for a minute [pauses[. I don't have any regrets at all, really. I mean, in hindsight I have things I wish I could fix. But there's still time. You never know.

TV REVIEW

Bon voyage

Just minutes into All Aboard! Rosie's Family Cruise, a lesbian mom on deck begins to cry as she tries to describe how good it feels to be part of the first-ever R Family vacation. Watching at home, you may be crying already. Produced for HBO and astutely directed by Shari Cookson, All Aboard!--a 90-minute documentary set to air on the network beginning April 6--takes us along with 500 LGBT families as they sail off on a seven-day cruise with Rosie and Kelli O'Donnell and their own four children. What makes this film so strong? It's not just the boatload of adorable kids. It's also the joy their parents take in parenting. It's the self-confidence of the heterosexual teens on board with their gay parents-and the openness of straight grandmas and grandpas traveling along with their gay broods. It's a peaceable kingdom that feels as though it's always existed.

The utopian vibe fits right in with gorgeous Key West, Fla., but runs up on a rock in Nassau, Bahamas, where the R Family guests disembark to find a posse of angry antigay church folk yelling and waving signs. When her daughter laments that the younger kids have to see this prejudice at work, one philosophical lesbian mom observes, 'They might as well see it now. It's all over the place."

Except that it isn't quite all over the place anymore. Thanks to the enterprising O'Donnells and their compadres, there's one safe spot in the world for our families--even if it's only for a few days and even if there's water under our feet.--A.S.