It’s been seven years since Roseanne Barr sent what many perceived to be a racist tweet that led to the cancellation of her hit show Roseanne — and the former sitcom star 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,” Barr, 72, told Variety in an interview published on Friday, June 6. “The day of my tweet, over 2 million Americans Googled Valerie Jarrett and the Iran deal. And that was my intent. So, whatever.”
In 2018, Barr sent a racially charged tweet, captioning a picture of Jarrett next to Helena Bonham Carter: “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.” Barr claims she had no idea that Jarrett is Black, instead telling the outlet that she believes she sent “the perfect caption.”
“I was already having nightmares about never going back to that show [Roseanne], and God woke me up,” Barr said of the night she sent the tweet, adding that she had been both drinking and on Ambien at the time. “I had my laptop there in bed, as always, and 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.”
(Jarrett was born in Iran and played a significant role in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal as part of former President Barack Obama’s administration.)
Roseanne Barr attends the Mr. Birchum Series Premiere on May 07, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. Araya Doheny/Getty Images for DailyWire+
In response to Barr’s tweet, ABC almost immediately canceled the Roseanne revival following a successful first season and after initially renewing it for season 2. Channing Dungey, the at-the-time ABC Entertainment president, called Barr’s tweet “abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values,” while Disney CEO Bob Iger reportedly signed off on Barr’s inevitable firing.
Barr denies that her tweet was racist, however, telling Variety that the claim itself is a sign of other people’s racism.
“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 told the outlet. “Rod Serling himself said it’s about the Jews in Germany. It is not a movie about Black people, Bob.”
Despite Roseanne Barr‘s absence from The Conners, her character was still front and center on the final season. Roseanne originally aired on ABC from 1988 to 1997. After being briefly revived in 2018 — and after Barr’s eventual exit from the series amid controversial social media posts — the story transformed into The Conners. The […]
After initially canceling the show, ABC decided to move forward with the Roseanne revival – but without its star. Instead, the series killed off the eponymous character via an opioid overdose and changed the show’s name to The Conners, which debuted in 2018.
“I felt very pissed off that they stole my rights and killed me,” Barr told Variety of the revival and her former character’s storyline. “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.”
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