‘Trump 2.0 effect’: Roseanne Barr plans television comeback


Barr has not appeared on TV since making racist remarks in 2018. Photo: Instagram
In what Variety is describing as the “Trump 2.0 effect”, Roseanne Barr ways she is planning her first return to television since being dumped from her own show in 2018.
The comedian and former titular star of iconic sitcom Roseanne, said her new project featured “very offensive ideas and a lot of swearing”.
In what she describes as “a cross between the Roseanne show and The Sopranos,” Barr told Variety this week that the new series involves her living with her fictional daughter, her son-in-law and their six children on a farm.
“They save America with guns, the Bible, petty crime and alcoholism,” she told Variety.
Barr, outspoken on conservative issues for many years, was sensationally dropped from her own Rosanne reboot in 2018 after posting a racist tweet about Obama White House adviser Valerie Jarrett, who is black.
Barr posted that Jarrett was the product of if “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby.”
Despite variously apologising for, explaining, and sometimes reiterating her comment, the second season of the show was retitled The Conners and continued without Barr.
The seventh season of The Conners will premiere this year.
Barr became one of TV’s biggest stars after Roseanne premiered in 1988 on US ABC, portraying a wise-cracking, blue-collar matriarch of a small-town family.
When asked if she would be willing to work with ABC again on her new series, she responded, “F–k no.”
“If Hollywood doesn’t buy it, then I’m just gonna make it myself,” she said of the still-untitled series.
“Does anybody in [Hollywood] like America or the people who watch TV? Because the people who watch TV would really like to see a show where working-class people win against the enemies of America.”
Appearing on right-wing commentator Candice Owen’s talk show in 2019, Barr ridiculed the #MeToo movement, calling it a “witch hunt”.
Talking about women being in men’s hotel rooms late at night, “If you don’t run out of the room … but you stayed around because you’re like, ‘I thought maybe he was going to give me a writing job’, well, you ain’t nothing but a ho,” she said.
Since being axed from The Conners, Barr has hosted her own podcast, The Roseanne Barr Podcast, and last year contributed her voice to the DailyWire+ adult animated series Mr. Birchum.