Roseanne Barr was booted off the air Tuesday following a racist tweet in which she attacked former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett. Some (okay, Fox News) jumped to defend Barr’s right to free speech, an idiotic argument when no government body was involved in the cancellation of her show. What happened is Barr learned that there are consequences for spewing racist shit across Twitter. She lost her show, she lost people’s respect, and she lost money. A lot of it.
With the cancellation of Roseanne, Barr is taking a multi-million-dollar hit. Variety reports that she made an estimated $250,000 per episode in the first rebooted season, of which there were nine episodes. That got her $2.25 million for one season of work. We don’t know how long Roseanne would have stayed on the air, but we do know ABC ordered 13 more episodes for a second rebooted season before the Twitter incident, per Time. That means Barr likely cost herself at least $3.25 million, based on her current rate. (The details of Barr’s contract with ABC are not public.)
Barr was also dropped by her talent agency, which will make booking future gigs more difficult.
Barr’s net worth is estimated to be $80 million. She’ll be fine for the time being. Hell, she might join forces with other maligned comedians and go on a sad sack tour of America to recoup the costs. She might hold out hope for another network to swoop in and save the show, Brooklyn Nine-Nine style—even though her coworkers have sworn off working with her—or offer her a lucrative guest role. Anything is possible in a world where Last Man Standing is back from the dead and Charlie Sheen is calling for a Two and a Half Men reboot.
