By reducing Priyanka Chopra to ‘someone Chopra,’ Rosie O’Donnell turned a benign gaffe into a cringeworthy apology

Rosie O’Donnell runs her yap without the safeguard of a brain-mouth filter.

It’s like running a leaf blower without ear protection. But it’s also been standard operating procedure for the comedian throughout her career. Most people think before they talk. Ms. O’Donnell thinks by talking. This can be refreshing. It can be offensive. It can be bewildering.

And as O’Donnell learned this week, thinking out loud can also create social discomfort.

Now, I don’t know what exactly happened on Sunday at Nobu Malibu, the hot spot beloved by the rich and famous. But based on her social media testimony, O’Donnell was dining with her son, his girlfriend and Fran Drescher, who also can rival a leaf blower in the Decibel Olympics.

At the next table, chopsticking their sushi, sat the lovebirds and new parents Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra Jonas. Let’s get Rosie to pick up the story here, via her TikTok confessional:

“Seated next to us at Malibu, at Nobu, was Nick Jonas and his wife, someone Chopra, which I always assumed was Deepak Chopra’s daughter. So when I said, ‘Hi, Nick Jonas, you were great in Kingdom. And hi, I know your dad,’ she goes, ‘You do? Who’s my dad?’ And I’m like, ‘Deepak.’ She’s like, ‘No, and Chopra is a common name …’”

Waiter? This wasabi tastes like awkward.

First, I have no clue why O’Donnell is voluntarily publicizing this private encounter, which this week has now generated headlines around the globe. But, fine. She was “embarrassed” about assuming the only two Chopras she’s ever met were father and daughter. I give her a D-minus pass on this because it’s a benign gaffe, meaning it does not come from a place of malice.

If I bumped into a celebrity I never heard of named Susie Yankovic at the Keg, I might assume her dad was Weird Al. That would not make me racist or guilty of any microaggressions. It would just mean I was ignorant and filling in the small-talk gaps until my steak arrived.

This is what O’Donnell was doing at Nobu. As a song and dance aficionado, she probably knows more about Nick Jonas than Kevin Jonas knows about his brother. But she obviously had no clue Priyanka Chopra is equally famous and on the cover of this month’s Vanity Fair. So O’Donnell thought aloud and concluded Priyanka must be the daughter of a New Age guru who shares the same skin tone, surname and ethnicity.

You can understand the blunder. Hollywood is one of the most nepotistic realms on this planet, second only to despotic dynasties. The celebrities today are the offspring of celebrities from yesterday. The celebrities of tomorrow will be the offspring of celebrities today.

I’m surprised Blue Ivy Carter does not already have a lifetime development deal.

So, no, O’Donnell’s initial faux pas at Nobu is not the problem. And, yes, Priyanka is correct. “Chopra” is a common name — in India, where both she and Deepak were born. It’s not a common name in showbiz. The late and great Alex Trebek once rattled off a few other “Menons” I had never heard of to see if I was related. I just shrugged.

Where O’Donnell screwed up was in her unforced error of a cringeworthy apology.

If you’re going to issue a TikTok mea culpa from a moving vehicle because you’re so mortified after wrongly connecting the branches of the family tree of a famous actress, then at least google her name, her background and who she is. Get it right on the second go.

Don’t refer to her as “someone Chopra.” That’s like me wrongly calling my Canada Post delivery guy “Mike,” getting politely corrected, and then switching to “someone mailman.”

And with that, O’Donnell made everything worse. She would have been better off just shutting her yap instead of concluding this week’s first TikTok apology with open questions to her fans: “Didn’t you think that Nick Jonas was married to Deepak Chopra’s daughter?”

No, nobody else thought that.

“Am I the only one who thought that?”

Yes, you’re the only one.

“OK, so Nick Jonas, I apologize. And to the Chopra wife, I apologize.”

Someone Chopra? The Chopra wife? She might as well have said: “I just want to say I’m so sorry to that brown Chopra chick at Nobu who was pounding back the sashimi as I asked about her childhood and if it was difficult to have tea parties with her dolls when her dad was rambling on about Vedanta philosophy and the quest for Barbie consciousness over teleology. I feel so horrible, Dehumanized Chopra! Forgive me, Cobra Mocha Okra Oprah Dopa Chopra!”

Not surprisingly, O’Donnell shared a second apology video, this time trying to get Priyanka’s name right while not reducing the actress to a matrimonial Nick Jonas accessory. But the damage was done. Celebrity apologies are like turboprops descending on the foggy runway in crosswind turbulence: You gotta stick the landing. There are no do-overs.

You touch down safely or you crash and burn.

Rosie O’Donnell crashed and burned this week. The craziest part is nobody had to know.

But she just can’t help herself. She just can’t stop talking.