John Goodman doesn’t regret defending Roseanne Barr after she was accused of racism.
The 71-year-old actor recalled feeling “uncomfortable” with the backlash his ‘Roseanne’ co-star faced in 2018 after comparing White House advisor Valerie Jarrett to an “ape” in a light-night Twitter post she later claimed was written when she was on Ambien, and admitted he felt “terrible” about the fact their show was cancelled and rebooted as ‘The Conners’ without his friend in the cast.
Asked if he regreted defending Roseanne, John told Variety: “No. I remember attending some kind of junket where they saw the pilot, and then the interviews, and it just turned into an attack.
“It made me really uncomfortable witnessing them go after Roseanne.
“Yeah, I felt bad for her. And then, yeah… I just feel terrible about the whole thing. You know, we had a great time. And I love her. She’s just her own person.”
John admitted he “misses” Roseanne and wouldn’t rule out working with her again in the future.
Asked if they could team up again in the future, he said: “I don’t know. If she’d like to… I just don’t know. I miss her. I wish her well.”
After ‘Roseanne’ was cancelled following the lead actress’ tweet, John insisted she was “not a racist”.
He told the Sunday Times newspaper in 2018: “I was surprised at the response. And that’s probably all I should say about that … I know for a fact that she’s not a racist.”
Roseanne herself recently reflected on the “witch-burning” she was subjected to in the aftermath of the scandal and accused network ABC of wanting her to “commit suicide”.
The 70-year-old comic – who also claimed she had no idea Valerie was black when she posted – said: “It was a witch-burning. They denied me the right to apologise. Oh my God, they just hated me so badly.
“I had never known that they hated me like that. They hate me because I have talent, because I have an opinion.
“Even though ‘Roseanne’ became their Number one show, they’d rather not have a number one 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.”
