Roseanne Barr has expressed that she feels betrayed by former co-star Sara Gilbert, who played her daughter on her defunct sitcom Roseanne.
In an interview with Megyn Kelly about her SiriusXM showThe 70-year-old comedian let loose on 48-year-old Gilbert, saying she “stabbed her in the back” and “twisted her repeatedly”.
“It was her tweet that canceled the show,” Barr explained of Gilbert, citing the cancellation of the Roseanne reboot in 2018.
ABC famously pulled the plug on the comedy after Barr shared a racist tweet about former presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett.
“And then she tweeted, ‘It’s sad when a cast member…’ — something about racism, blah blah. And I was down. “I was just devastated,” she continued.
“And you know, but in the end she owns my work and Tom Werner becomes her partner who owns my work.”
Speaking up: Roseanne Barr recently opened up about feeling betrayed by former co-star Sara Gilbert, who played her daughter on the sitcom of the same name
Sara, who served as executive producer on the Roseanne revival and had played Darlene Conner throughout the series, called Barr’s tweets “disgusting.”
“Roseanne” initially aired from 1988 to 1997 before showing a March 2018 revival of how the working-class Conner family fared during the Trump era.
Then ABC canceled the reboot in May 2018, hours after the comedian posted a racist tweet about a former adviser to President Obama.
The then 65-year-old actress was widely condemned after she tweeted that Valerie Jarrett, an African American and adviser to Barack and Michelle Obama, looked like the “Muslim Brotherhood and the Planet of the Apes had a baby.”
Barr initially defended herself against accusations of racism by tweeting, “Islam is not a race.”
But she later tweeted Jarrett that she was sorry for making “a bad joke” about her politics and her looks, and said she was leaving Twitter.
“I’m really sorry I made a bad joke about her politics and her looks. I should have known better. “Forgive me – my joke was in bad taste,” she wrote.
Despite the apology, critics urged ABC to cancel their show, which became the third-highest-rated US show after Sunday Night Football and This Is Us.
Responding to Roseanne’s comments during a town hall meeting on MSNBC titled “Everyday Racism in America,” Jarrett said ABC made the right decision to cancel the reboot.
Bad blood: “It was her tweet that canceled the show,” Barr explained of Gilbert, citing the cancellation of the Roseanne reboot in 2018
Barr said she felt particularly let down by Gilbert, revealing her TV daughter “begged me to come back and said, ‘I have your back. This time I won’t let anyone loose on you. I won’t let anyone hurt you.” . I will protect you. I know you have mental health issues but I will be there for you. I will stand in the way.”
But after the tasteless and offensive tweet, Barr’s character was killed, which Roseanne interpreted as a chilling message.
The longtime comedian said, “They just tried to kill me and I felt like they killed my character and my character.”
She added, “But I thought they were going to send a message over the airwaves because they knew I had mental health issues.”
“I thought they wanted me to kill myself.” And so did all my friends. They said, ‘They want to urge you to commit suicide.’
After Roseanne’s cancellation, a spin-off called The Conners premiered.
It’s done well for the network and was recently renewed for a sixth season.
In 2019, Barr said Gilbert “destroyed the show and my life with that tweet.”
How it began: Roseanne first aired from 1988 to 1997; Photo from January 1989
Original cast: Roseanne, John Goodman, Sara, Lecy Goranson, Laurie Metcalf and Michael Fishman, pictured in 1989
Earlier this year, during a stand-up set, Roseanne spoke about the moment she found out her TV show was cancelled.
She returned to the spotlight with a new show – a comedy special on Fox Nation entitled Roseanne Barr: Cancel This!
The veteran comedienne admitted she was “pissed” when she learned the show was cancelled, but said she decided “not to let the assholes win”.
Elsewhere in the special, Barr joked about preoccupations with pronouns, gender identity and generational differences.
