“I just don’t know what’s happened,” Bernhard said of her former sitcom costar.
Sandra Bernhard called news of her former sitcom costar Roseanne Barr’s upcoming “anti-woke” show “heartbreaking.”
During an appearance on Andy Cohen’s Watch What Happens Live on Monday, Bernhard fielded a fan question about her relationship with the controversial star.
“When was the last time you spoke to Roseanne and what do you think of her working on the new anti-woke show that’ll stream on Elon Musk’s X?” Cohen asked on behalf of a viewer, using Twitter owner Musk’s new name for the social media platform.
“Heartbreaking,” Bernard replied. “It’s heartbreaking. I mean, she’s one of the most original, fabulous voices in comedy and I just don’t know what’s happened. We haven’t spoken in a real long time, sadly.”
Bernhard portrayed Nancy Bartlett, estranged wife of Dan’s (John Goodman) poker buddy Arnie (Tom Arnold) and good pal of Roseanne and Jackie (Laurie Metcalf), on Barr’s eponymous ABC sitcom that ran for nine seasons between 1988 and 1997. She also reprised her role for the revived tenth season in 2018, prior to its cancellation in the wake of Barr’s racist and incendiary tweets about former White House advisor Valerie Jarrett. A different spin-off without Barr, The Conners, was greenlit soon after, with the matriarch killed off via opioid overdose.
Barr told the Los Angeles Times earlier this year that she could not “bear” to watch the spin-off. “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,” she said. “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. They can kiss my ass.”
Sandra Bernhard; Roseanne Barr
A vocal Donald Trump supporter, Barr has in recent years aligned herself with conservative figures and stirred controversy for bizarre remarks, including the claim that “nobody died in the Holocaust.” (Barr herself is Jewish.) It was reported last week that Barr is set to launch a show on Musk’s rebranded social media platform sometime this month, and that it would be in the form of a written monologue or sketch comedy.
