Leif Garrett Says He Wasn’t Smoking Crack In The Green Room Of “The Rosie O’Donnell Show”

Yesterday we learned that Rosie O’Donnell revealed to Andy Cohen that both Bill Cosby and Leif Garrett were banned from The Rosie O’Donnell Show. Bill Cosby was banned for obvious reasons (aka he was allegedly a creep to one of Rosie’s producers). The reason Leif wasn’t asked back isn’t surprising for anyone who watched his VH1 Behind the Music. Rosie alleged that Leif got fucked up on drugs in the green room. Leif has responded to Rosie’s allegations, and he swears he wasn’t on anything during his appearance.

Leif spoke to Too Fab to set the record straight after Rosie decided to name him. Rosie claimed that when she first saw Leif he was fine, but then she checked in on him 20 minutes later in the green room, and he had a huge red welt across his face that she believes was from a crack pipe burn. But according to Leif, he was sober.

“That’s not even how it came close. I don’t know if she’s got Alzheimer’s or doesn’t remember what happened, but it’s on YouTube. You can watch the clip on YouTube. She said I had a little burn on my face from using crack, which is so not true. First of all, I would never do anything like that. The funny thing was she even said that I supposedly used crack in her green room and then was nodding off. First of all, anyone knows if you use crack, you don’t nod off. I was at that time, for that show, I was sober. At least get the story right, you know?”

But, that doesn’t mean Leif wasn’t going through issues at the time. He suggests that maybe Rosie was remembering the story wrong, because he did actually have a drug-related injury when he appeared on her show.

“What I had was on my hand, I had a scarf tied onto my hand because I had an abscess from using dope. Not that day…my body was still detoxing at that time. I had a little thing on my hand that I had covered up with a bandana. Anyway, that’s what she made a comment on. Nobody was smoking crack and there was no burn on my face.”

Leif is lucky the internet exists because there is a clip of him on The Rosie O’Donnell Show, and yes, he’s got his hand wrapped up in a bandanna. There’s also no visible giant red welt, although his hair and beanie are covering parts of his face. Also something to note: Leif’s appearance happened just a few months before he was busted trying to buy heroin and cocaine from undercover police officers in a Los Angeles park in 1999.

Leif is also pissed off that Rosie pronounced his name wrong when she was talking to Andy Cohen. It’s pronounced like “layf,” and not “leaf,” which is how Rosie pronounced it. And of course, he’s mad that Rosie would even tell such a story in the first place, saying, “There’s no reason to be nasty, man. It’s just insane.” Um…that message might be better delivered if he hadn’t just accused Rosie of having Alzheimer’s.

This story is more than two decades old. And unless someone discovers some secret green room footage from a camera that was hidden in Rosie’s Tom Cruise shrine, we’ll never know. But I don’t think Leif was as sober as he says. Maybe he was sober, but he definitely had to be a little high. After all, there were so many Koosh balls flying around that place, and you know people were getting light-headed and loopy from all those toxic rubber fumes.

Pic: Wenn.com/FayesVision