Roseanne Barr is reopening one of television’s most explosive cancellations, insisting the 2018 tweet that ended her ABC comeback came after she already believed control of “Roseanne” was slipping away.
Eight years after ABC fired her and transformed the revival into “The Conners,” Barr says that she still rejects the characterization of her Valerie Jarrett post as racist, remains bitter about how her character was killed off and is estranged from several former castmates.
Now 73, she is betting on another comeback through the independently produced “Meemaw: A Modern Day Fable.”
Roseanne Barr Says She Thought Her Show Had Already Been Taken
Barr’s account of the 2018 collapse begins before the tweet that ultimately cost her the series.
After the revival’s hugely successful first season, she said she called the head writer to ask when work on Season 2 would begin and learned the writers had already been back for about a month.
“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” Barr recalled in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “It was like getting hit with a board. I knew at that moment, ‘Oh my God, they have taken my show. I gave them a number one show, they have taken it away from me.’”
Barr said she went to bed after drinking beer and taking Ambien, angry about what she believed had happened behind the scenes.
She also continues to dispute the interpretation of her post about former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett.
“It was not a racist tweet. It wasn’t about race, it was about politics,” Barr said, again connecting the remark to Iran and insisting her “Planet of the Apes” reference was about fascism rather than Black people.
ABC called the tweet “abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values” in 2018.
More recently, former co-star Michael Fishman said the show was “rightfully canceled,” with The Blast reporting that he accused Barr’s defenders of perpetuating a “lie” about why it ended.
Roseanne Barr Recalls Pleading With ABC Not To Cancel The Show
Barr gave a detailed account of the morning she learned ABC was moving against her.
“At 8:00 a.m., my boyfriend goes, ‘Hey, ABC’s on the phone.’ And I go, ‘Why?’ He goes, ‘Because you tweeted something.’ And I said, ‘I deleted that.’ He goes, ‘Well, they’ve got it and they’re saying it’s racist.’”
Barr said she initially responded, “Muslim is not a race,” before being told the controversy centered on Jarrett being Black.
“I’m like, ‘Oh, f-ck. What?’” she recalled.
When she spoke with then-Disney/ABC executive Ben Sherwood, Barr said she understood how serious the situation had become.
“I just swallow hard and I go, ‘Well, I thought she was white,’” she said. “Don’t cancel my show. You’re not going to cancel my show, are you? I will do anything. I will go on any of your news shows. Let me explain. Let me apologize.”
Barr apologized publicly in 2018, saying during one interview that there was “no excuse” for the ignorance that caused hurt.
Her latest comments, however, make clear that she remains deeply resentful about how quickly the revival disappeared.
Barr Claims Her Deal To Let ‘The Conners’ Continue Was ‘All A Trick’
ABC eventually moved forward without Roseanne Barr, creating “The Conners,” which ran for seven seasons.
Barr says she stepped aside after being presented with a choice between surrendering her involvement or leaving the wider cast and crew without jobs.
“They called me and said, ‘You have a choice to make: You can sign off on letting us do a show without you [or everyone is out of a job],’” she told THR.
Barr claims producer Tom Werner promised to make clear that he did not believe she was racist after she signed away her rights and to acknowledge publicly that she had acted to preserve jobs.
Asked whether she received money from the subsequent seasons, Barr answered bluntly, “Nope. It was all a trick.”
She remains particularly angry about the way Roseanne Conner was removed from the story.
“They killed me with an opioid overdose,” Barr said. “That was a nice way to kill America’s mom. Drug overdose.”
For Barr, the decision compounded the loss of a character she says viewers still approach her about, with some telling her, “You were my mom.”
More From The Blast
Roseanne Barr Says Her Former TV Family Is No Longer A Family
The professional fallout also became deeply personal. Asked how she gets along with John Goodman and Laurie Metcalf today, Barr answered, “I don’t.” When asked if she remained in contact with them, she replied, “Of course not.”
The interviewer noted that the cast once appeared to be a family off-screen as well.
“I did too,” Barr responded.
She said her son recently approached Goodman about making a cameo in “Meemaw,” but the actor declined.
Her feud with Fishman has been much more public. The Blast reported that Barr called her former TV son a “little f-cking worm” after he again defended ABC’s cancellation.
“Nobody is more brokenhearted than me,” Barr told THR. “I just choose to remember the fun and the good times.”
The interview produced another surprising twist when Barr sided with her ex-husband Tom Arnold in his dispute with Chuck Lorre over writing credits from the original sitcom.
“Unbelievably, I don’t think you’ll hear me say this often, but Tom Arnold is telling the truth for once,” Barr said. “Tom Arnold is defending me. I have to thank him for that.”
Roseanne Barr Is Betting On Another Television Comeback
Barr now has a new television family. Her eight-episode “Meemaw: A Modern Day Fable” centers on a patriotic grandmother leading a mixed-race prepper family in Texas. Drea de Matteo, Omar Gooding and Randy Quaid are among the cast.
Barr called the project “the funniest sh-t I’ve ever done.”
The independently produced series is now being shopped to distributors. The Blast previously reported that Barr followed through on an earlier promise to make a show herself if Hollywood would not finance it.
She told THR that working with Gooding, who plays her Black son-in-law, has helped her process some of the pain surrounding her cancellation. Barr also claimed some Black performers were unwilling to audition because of the controversy attached to her name.
“A lot of people said no, they wouldn’t. ‘How could any Black person work with me?’ That hurt me,” she said.
Despite everything that has happened since 2018, Barr is pitching her comeback with the same confidence that marked her television peak.
“Anybody who wants a number one show and is smart enough to take a number one show,” she said when asked who might buy “Meemaw.”
“I don’t know why they don’t want a number one show and why they hate a number one show and why they would destroy a number one show,” Barr continued. “But if they do want a number one show, I got it.”
Eight years after losing her ABC revival, Roseanne Barr clearly does not consider the cancellation the final word on either her career or her version of what happened.
