Roseanne Barr still has some — okay, lots — of hard feelings towards Sara Gilbert, who played her daughter on both the original and reboot of her eponymous sitcom.
In a recent interview with Megyn Kelly on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Show, Barr unloaded on Gilbert, saying she “stabbed” her in the back and “repeatedly twisted it.”
“It was her tweet that canceled the show,” Barr said of Gilbert. “And then she tweeted ‘It’s sad when one cast member,’ something about racist, blah, blah. And I was floored. I was just floored. And you know, but she ends up owning my work and Tom Werner becomes her partner in owning my work.”
The original Roseanne ran from 1988 to 1997 and followed the day to day life of the blue collar Conner clan in the fictional town of Landford, Ill. It was one of the highest-rated shows on television for most of its run and had already gone down in history as one of the greatest sitcoms ever when ABC brought it back in 2018 — with most of the original cast including Barr and Gilbert as her daughter Darlene.
Things were going gangbusters for the Roseanne reboot, with critical acclaim and high ratings in the midst of the streaming revolution. Then Barr sent a racist tweet about former Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett. Condemnation was swift from Gilbert, among many others, who called Barr’s comments “abhorrent” and not a reflection of the “cast and crew or anyone associated with our show.”
Barr felt especially betrayed by Gilbert after she had “begged me to come back saying, ‘I’ve got your back. This time I won’t let anyone at you. I won’t let anyone hurt you. I’m gonna protect you. I know you have mental health problems, but I’m gonna be there. I’m gonna stand in the way.'”
Roseanne was cancelled after the first season and Barr’s character was killed off — a decision, Barr felt, was a message to her.
“And you know, they just tried to kill me and I felt like they killed my character and my character,” Barr said, “but I thought they were sending a message over the airwaves because they knew I had mental health issues. I thought they wanted me to kill myself. And all my friends did too. They said, they’re trying to push you to suicide.”
Months after Roseanne‘s cancellation, a spin-off, The Conners, following the now Roseanne-less clan, premiered — it was just renewed for its sixth season.
Though Barr said she forgave Gilbert for condemning her racism in 2018, the next year she claimed Gilbert “destroyed the show and my life with that tweet.” One would think that all those “fire Roseanne” and “cancel Roseanne” tweetsmight have had something to do with it as well, but the correct use of “abhorrent” is pretty powerful.
Roseanne Barr says costar Sara Gilbert ‘stabbed me in the back’. Roseanne Barr says costar Sara Gilbert ‘stabbed me in the back’