Roseanne Barr Insists God Told Her To Send Racist 2018 Tweet

Roseanne Barr has opened up about her 2018 tweet that led to her show’s cancellation, claiming it was misinterpreted and not racist.

Despite initially apologizing, the actress now regrets making the post, claiming the backlash was politically motivated.

Roseanne Barr, who believes she was targeted for her conservative views, is now developing a new edgy comedy with Allan Stephan about a rebellious farmer, inspired by her life in Hawaii.

In a new interview with Variety on June 6, Barr opened up once more about the tweet that abruptly ended her career in Hollywood.

The 72-year-old comedian, who rose to fame with her hit sitcom “Roseanne” (1988–1997), saw a brief return to the spotlight in the show’s 2018 reboot, until it was canceled after she posted a tweet widely condemned as racist.

Despite the fallout, Barr remains defiant and says she has no regrets.

“The way I feel about it is that God told me to do what I did, and it was a nuclear bomb,” she said. “The day of my tweet, over 2 million Americans googled Valerie Jarrett and the Iran deal. And that was my intent. So, whatever.”

The controversial tweet compared former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett to a character from “Planet of the Apes.”

It read, “Muslim brotherhood & Planet of the Apes had a baby = vj.” Barr said she came across an image showing Jarrett beside actress Helena Bonham Carter in full prosthetic makeup as the ape character Ari from the 2001 film.

Barr explained how she made the controversial post, claiming she had just woken up after taking a mix of Ambien and alcohol.

“I was already having nightmares about never going back to that show [‘Roseanne’], and God woke me up. I had my laptop there in bed, as always.”

She continued, “I opened it, and there was [an X post with] a picture of Valerie Jarrett next to Helena Bonham Carter in full makeup as Ari in ‘Planet of the Apes,’ and they looked like Xerox copies of each other, so I captioned it.”

Although the “Roseanne” reboot debuted to impressive ratings, ABC swiftly canceled the series after Barr’s controversial tweet in 2018.

At the time, then-ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey condemned the tweet, calling it “abhorrent, repugnant, and inconsistent with our values.”

Disney CEO Bob Iger echoed the sentiment, stating, “There was only one thing to do here, and that was the right thing.”

Barr has continued to push back against accusations of racism since her firing. In her recent Variety interview, she insisted her tweet was misinterpreted.

“They were so racist that they thought my tweet said Black people look like monkeys when it was about ‘Planet of the Apes,’ which is a movie about fascism,” she said. “Rod Serling himself said it’s about the Jews in Germany. It is not a movie about Black people, Bob.”

Following Barr’s departure, ABC kept her show alive by rebranding it as “The Conners.” Her character, Roseanne, was written off via a fatal opioid overdose.

The spinoff continued for seven seasons before concluding in April 2025.

Barr didn’t hold back when reflecting on her firing and the fate of her character in the “Roseanne” reboot.

“I felt very p-ssed off that they stole my rights and killed me,” she said. “It was so stupid and shortsighted, and I don’t know how they answer to their shareholders for canceling me before even one sponsor pulled out.”

In a separate statement made in May, the Emmy-winning actress claimed she had long been a target.

“They were waiting for me to slip up,” she said, alleging that network executives, particularly those she perceived as left-leaning, were already wary of her public support for Donald Trump.

“They spied. They monitored everything I did,” Barr asserted. “They wanted to censor me from the very beginning.”

She also believes her tweet was deliberately misrepresented, “They hijacked that tweet and made out it said something that it didn’t. I’m not stupid. I would never refer to a black person as the product of an ape.”