Roseanne Barr has made a number of explosive claims against ABC and parent company Disney, with whom she worked for over 10 years before she was written out of her own show due to controversial social media posts.
Barr, 72, took the network by storm with her popular sitcom “Roseanne” in 1988. The hit show also featured John Goodman (Dan Conner), Sara Gilbert (Darlene Conner), Laurie Metcalf (Jackie Harris), Johnny Galecki (David Healy) and more throughout its initial 10-season run.
In 2018, the show was revived a little more than two decades after it went off the air, though the return was short-lived. Barr was abruptly fired over a tweet about former President Barack Obama and Valerie Jarrett, one of his senior advisors, in which she said the political aide looked like the offspring of the “Muslim brotherhood & Planet of the Apes.”
ABC axed the show despite its successful ratings, referring to Barr’s post as “abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values.”
The network later launched a spinoff series, “The Conners,” in which Barr’s character was killed off and written out of the show. “The Conners” ran for seven seasons before concluding in April of this year.
Barr is now breaking her silence on her controversial firing, stating in a fiery interview with the Daily Mail that cancel culture made gave her network bosses the rationale to get rid of her.
“They were waiting for me to slip up,” the comedian alleged, further claiming that the network’s executives already had it out for her due to her outspoken support for President Donald Trump and conservative views. Barr also accused the network of taking extraordinary steps to axe the show before the post was ever made
“They spied. They monitored everything I did. They wanted to censor me from the very beginning,” Barr told the Daily Mail. “They hijacked that tweet and made out it said something that it didn’t.”
The comedian stated at the time that she was unaware of Jarrett’s background, which includes Iranian and African heritage, adding that she was referring merely to her physical appearance and did not view the post as “racist.” Following the backlash, Barr blamed her prescription medication for the comment, claiming she was “Ambien tweeting” when she sent the 2AM post.
“I’m not stupid. I would never refer to a black person as the product of an ape,” Barr told the outlet, insisting that she was referring to Obama’s Iranian nuclear deal. “The Planet of the Apes movie is about a fascist takeover of the world — and that is what I was talking about. The tweet was intended as a humorous political statement and not a racial one. But liberals in Hollywood are so racist, they automatically think of a black person,” Barr explained.
The comedian also rescinded her apology ,in which she claimed she was “truly sorry for making a bad joke about her politics and looks,” adding that her joke was “in bad taste.”
“The worst mistake you can do is apologize to the left. Then they are on a crusade against you,” she said in the new interview. “Once you admit a mistake, they will keep on until you’re dead.”
