Five years after getting fired from her own sitcom revival, Roseanne Barr is doing some reflection on her exit from Roseanne and the death of her character in the show’s spinoff series, The Conners. Back in 2018, Roseanne was revived on ABC to great success, as the revival, which essentially served as the tenth season of the sitcom, was a ratings juggernaut. The network renewed the show for another season, planning to bring back Barr along with all of her co-stars for more of Roseanne.
We all know what would happen next. Barr’s controversial social media activity had resulted in ABC pulling the plug on the Roseanne revival, despite the high ratings and critical acclaim it had garnered. The decision was then made to keep the show going without Barr, resulting in the development of the spinoff series The Conners. It is explained in the new show that Barr’s Roseanne character had died due to an opioid overdose, having kept her drug addiction secret from the family. The show has found continued success without Barr, albeit with lower ratings, as it’s now in its fifth season.
But there’s one person we know who isn’t watching: Roseanne Barr herself. In a new interview with the L.A. Times, Barr speaks at length about her thoughts on the Roseanne firing and ABC moving forward without her. When it comes to her former co-stars and the crew she had worked with on the show, Barr says she’s “not like them,” questioning how it “didn’t faze them” to watch her character getting killed off. The funnywoman seems to feel slighted about this after all she had done for the show, though she adds that she has since forgiven everyone.
“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. They s— on my contribution to television and the show itself. But I forgive everybody. 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.”
If Barr has forgiven the Roseanne cast and crew, has she been able to enjoy The Conners? The answer to that question is a resounding “no.” When asked if she watches the show at all, Barr says she can’t bring herself to do it, feeling that having her character killed off this way was too personal.
“No. I just can’t bear it, so I don’t. 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. 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. Because they can kiss my ass.”
Getting fired and enduring heavy criticism online was no walk in the park for Barr, but she says she’s doing much better these days. She comments on what it took to turn over that new leaf, and it was a matter of looking at the bright side of the situation. Regardless of how it ended, Barr is proud of the accomplishments she had achieved as the star of Roseanne, pointing to how much less people are watching The Conners than had watched the Roseanne revival.
“It had been very gratifying. I had always wanted a 10th season of the show to tie up everything, to tell the full story of this family as I wanted to tell it. I came back after 20 years and was No. 1 again. That’s unprecedented. So I started thinking about all the positives of it, my work and the contribution I made to pop culture and television, its portrayal of a woman and her working-class family. They can’t take that away from me. They’ll probably try.”
