Roseanne Barr hasn’t had a lot of supporters in Hollywood lately, but now, a friend and fellow comedienne is coming to her defense.
Mo’Nique appeared on KTLA Friday and stated her case as to why the embattled actress ought to get a second chance, following her ouster from ABC’s revival of Roseanne due to her controversial tweet about Valerie Jarrett.
“Roseanne Barr is my sister in comedy and she is my universal sister and what I won’t do … is throw her away for making a mistake,” Mo’Nique, 50, told the show, according to Page Six. “We’ve all said and done things, baby, that we wish we could take back … but when you’re in the public eye, you can’t.”
Mo’Nique went on to describe why it is that she feels such a particular affinity for Barr, 65, saying that she stood up for her at a time when others wouldn’t.
“When I had The Mo’Nique Show and there were big, major, black superstar talent that had white representatives and they told their talent that show was ‘too black’ and we really don’t want you to go on there. But there was a white woman named Roseanne Barr that showed up for me when people that looked like me [didn’t],” she said.
She implored that Hollywood should not “throw her away” based on her terrible choice of words, which compared Jarrett, a senior adviser to Barack Obama, to Planet of the Apes. “My sister made a mistake and she said something that I know she wishes you could take back,” Mo’Nique insisted.
Mo’Nique herself has some experience feeling cast aside by the industry, of course. The actress has long maintained that she was “blackballed” by Tinseltown after her 2010 Academy Award win for Precious because she refused to “play the game.”
She’s not the only one who can relate to Barr’s present circumstances, either. Charlie Sheen has also expressed some empathy for Barr in an interview with Australia’s Kyle & Jackie-O.
“I can relate to that tone of absolute despair, because it’s not just about herself, it’s about the people that she knows she affected as well. What I hear in her voice, trying not to focus on the words but the emotion, is I hear the frustration, pain, there’s such a sadness there,” he told the outlet, according to The Wrap.
Sheen, 52, may have been referring to Barr’s recent TV interview with Hannity in which she apologized for offending others, saying, “I’m so sad that anyone thinks that of me, but I’m not that person. I was going through a very hard time. … I didn’t [know better]. I made a mistake. It cost me everything, my life’s work. I wish I worded it better.”
