Roseanne Barr has a message for those who tried to take her down: “Cancel This!”
The always controversial standup comedy icon opened up about how she felt when the hit revival of classic sitcom “Roseanne” was replaced with “The Conners,” admitting she “can’t bear” to watch the show.
“When they killed my character off, that was a message to me, knowing that I’m mentally ill or have mental health issues, that they did want me to commit suicide,” Barr, 70, told Los Angeles Times while promoting her first standup special in nearly 20 years. “Roseanne Barr: Cancel This!” premieres Feb. 13 on Fox Nation.
“They killed my character, and my character. And all of that was to say thank you for bringing 28 million viewers, which they never had before and will never see again,” the actress continued. “They can kiss my ass.”
“Roseanne” first aired from 1988 through 1997, and was rebooted in 2018. The reboot was canceled after Barr posted a string of tweets that led to accusations of racism and anti-Semitism. ABC ultimately revived the series without her and renamed it “The Conners.”
‘A woman is somebody whose boobs hang down to her knees … from giving birth to five ungrateful little privileged bastards … My pronouns are ‘kiss my ass’
The star of “Roseanne Barr: Cancel This!” is just as outspoken as ever as she returns on Fox Nation
She revisited the controversy that started when she compared former President Barack Obama’s adviser Valerie Jarrett to an ape, saying she “thought [Jarrett] was white.”
“I said I would go on my show and explain it. They wouldn’t let me. They decided I was a liar in my apology,” Barr said.
“And they denied me the right to apologize. Oh my God, they just hated me so badly. I had never known that they hated me like that,” Barr claimed. “They hate me because I have talent, because I have an opinion. Even though ‘Roseanne’ became their No. 1 show, they’d rather not have a No. 1 show.”
But the comedian now says she “survived” and “came out on the other side” of what she called “a witch-burning.”
“I’m the only person who’s lost everything, whose life’s work was stolen, stolen by people who I thought loved me. And there was silence,” Barr said. “There was no one in Hollywood really defending me publicly, except for Mo’nique, who is a brave, close, dear friend.”
“They didn’t do it to anyone else in Hollywood, although they always throw in Dave Chappelle and Louis C.K. Well, Louis C.K. did lose everything, but he committed an actual [offense],” she added.
In 2017, Louis C.K. confessed to masturbating in front of several women without their consent, while Chappelle has gotten backlash for “transphobic” comments made in a comedy special.
Barr still struggles to understand how her former castmates handled her being ousted.
“I can’t know what they think or feel. I don’t know why they did what they did. I’m not like them. I realized that. I can’t believe what they did, with all the pain that I went through to bring the show back. And it didn’t faze them to murder my character, either,” she shared.
Though Barr says her castmates — which includes John Goodman, Laurie Metcalf and Sara Gilbert — “s–t on [her] contribution to television,” she forgives them.
“I started thinking that God took me out of there to save me. And once I started thinking that way, I was, like, a lot better off,” she admitted.
Now, Barr is making her comeback in a new comedy special for Fox Nation.
“Roseanne Barr: Cancel This!” is an hourlong comedy special that she said doesn’t hold back.
“I’m so happy that this is the most offensive in my stand-up that I’ve ever had the balls to be,” Barr said.
She starts off her special by asking, “Has anyone else here been fired recently?”
In a clip from the special, she pokes fun at pronouns and gender identity.
“These people, they have no concept of reality. They’ve been living in a bubble forever. Asking questions have nothing to do with the real world,” she says in the stand-up special. “What is my gender, mom? What is my gender?” she joked, “Your gender is, get a job. That’s your gender.”
Barr, sporting a denim-on-denim look, continued: “What are they thinking? Ask a – what is a woman? They don’t know that? That one they’re asking all the time. What is a woman? I’ll tell you what a woman is. A woman is me.”
“That’s what a woman is, okay? A woman is someone who cleans up everybody else’s s–t. That’s what a woman is,” she went on. “A woman is somebody whose boobs hang down to her knees with a prolapsed uterus from giving birth to five ungrateful little privileged bastards that have never had to work for anything in their whole damn life.”
“My pronouns are: ‘kiss my ass,’ ” she concluded.
“Roseanne Barr: Cancel This!” streams Feb. 13 on Fox Nation.