Roseanne Barr pleads her case in upcoming documentary
Roseanne Barr fans wanting to see the disgraced comic on TV again are in luck, thanks to a documentary airing this weekend on Reelz.
In a preview posted Tuesday, the Daily Beast says “Roseanne: Kicked Out of Hollywood” takes a very sympathetic look at the former sitcom star’s sudden fall from grace after she tweeted that Valerie Jarrett, who was senior adviser to former president Barack Obama, is what it would look like if the “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby [sic].”
Almost immediately, her successfully rebooted program ’90s show Roseanne was canceled as was the star herself, she protests.
According to the Daily Beast, Barr, 69, said her “rock ‘n’ roll” mindset, which included pills, contributed to the ill-advised tweet that preceded her fall.
“Everyone was begging me to give up my Twitter. Everyone,” Barr reportedly said. “My kids were trying to lock me out, but I wouldn’t! Because it’s like, I just couldn’t. I’m a goddamn American. I’m not going to do it. I’m a comic, I’m a bad girl, I’m too rock ‘n’ roll. I’m going to say f*** it and f*** you ’til I take my last breath.”
But even still, Barr insists she wouldn’t have sent the racially insensitive tweet about Jarrett – which she said caused the May 2018 cancellation of her show 40 minutes later – if she’d been clearheaded.
“I did something I wouldn’t do if I hadn’t been on that Ambien,” she insists. “It makes you do a lot of crazy s***.”
Ambien is a powerful sleeping pill with side effects that include memory loss, abnormal thoughts, confusion and aggressive behavior, according to WebMD.
She also argues she was “really pissed” the day she posted her nasty message.
Barr, who reportedly calls her plight a “witch-burning,” is defended on the Reelz 90-minute documentary by celebrities including Mo’Nique and Howie Mandel, the Daily Beast said.
Her boyfriend, Johnny Argent, reportedly argued that the writer’s room on Barr’s show “would not accept” her politics, which were famously pro-Donald Trump, for which there was mutual admiration.
“It was politically expedient for them to s*** on my name,” complained Barr who, along with Argent, insists the mother of five is not a racist.
Barr told The New York Times that then-president Trump called her in March 2018 to congratulate her on the revival of a show that was “about us.”
Her Roseanne castmates continued on without their matriarch to do the ABC sitcom The Conners, which is in its fourth season.
Co-star Sara Gilbert said after Barr’s infamous tweet that the situation was “incredibly sad and difficult,” but said the entire cast had created a show they were proud of “that is separate and apart from the opinions and words of one cast member.”
Gilbert tweeted she was “disappointed in [Barr’s] actions to say the least.”
Actress Emma Kenney tweeted in 2018 that she had called her manager to quit the show when she learned Roseanne had been nixed.
Actor Michael Fishman played Barr’s son D.J. on the original Roseanne and its reboot. He called her comments “reprehensible.”
People magazine reported that Barr accused Fishman of knowing she created the show to celebrate “inclusivity” and added, “You throw me under the bus. Nice!”
ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey denounced Barr’s comments as “abhorrent” and “repugnant.”
The 90-minute Reelz show airs Sunday night. Its promo describes Barr as a “cancel culture casualty” and celebrates her as “America’s Domestic Goddess.”
(New York Daily News/ TNS)