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Roseanne Barr has recounted the moment she found out her TV show was being cancelled, after she released an ill-advised 2018 tweet comparing Barack Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, who is black, to a character from The planet of the Apes.
Barr, 70, returns to the spotlight Monday with a new show: a comedy special on Fox Nation, titled: Roseanne Barr: Cancel This!
The veteran comedian admits she was “mad” to find out the show was being axed, but said she decided not to “let assholes win.”
So, I went in and I was on CNN they canceled my show, just 20 minutes later. And not only that, but they killed my…they killed Roseanne. They killed her,” she explains.
The crowd boos, and Barr adds, “I guess they thought they shut me up.” But guess that?’
Roseanne Barr onstage during her new stand-up comedy special, which she said she decided to do because she couldn’t ‘let the jerks win’
Barr said he didn’t care too much initially, because he “couldn’t sit in writing rooms with those people for another second.”
But he said he felt they “disrespected their own viewers” by taking their long-running show off the air.
The Utah-born comedian, who said she didn’t know Jarrett was black when he called her cute, said she felt the saga was overblown.
Barr said that he thought it could have been “a teachable moment” and that he could have invited Jarrett on the show.
“She could have come,” Barr said.
“I could have had 15 times the ratings and I could have learned something on behalf and shown something to America, which I always wanted to do that anyway.”
‘Get people together and learn from each other, right? When we have made mistakes.
We can learn to get along, for God’s sake.
Barr said she left feeling resentful of the wasted opportunity.
‘But no, they didn’t want to do that. And that pissed me off.
‘And that’s why I came back, even though I was like, why would you want to do that after what they did?
‘But I came back because there’s just… something wrong with me or something.
‘I just – something is in me. I just can’t let the jerks win.
‘I am not. I’m not going to.’
His new special comes when he spoke out against show culture in an interview with the Los Angeles Timesarguing that it was canceled and driven out of business while others were welcomed back into the fold.
Barr saw success early in her career doing stand-up work before starring in the hit comedy Roseanne.
Roseanne Barr in 2018. She has a new stand-up comedy special coming out on February 13.
In a clip from his new comedy special, Barr could be heard poking fun at concerns over pronouns, gender identity and generational divides.
‘These people have no concept of reality. They have been living in a bubble forever. Asking questions has nothing to do with the real world,” she said.
‘What’s my gender, mom? What is my gender?’ she joked: ‘Your gender is, get a job. That is your genre.
Barr, dressed in jeans and a denim shirt, paused for the crowd to cheer before continuing.
‘What are they thinking? Ask – what is a woman? Don’t you know that? The one they are asking all the time. What is a woman? I’ll tell you what a woman is. A woman is me.
That’s what a woman is, okay? A woman is someone who cleans up everyone else’s shit. That’s what a woman is,’ she said.
“A woman is someone who is knee-titty with a prolapsed uterus from giving birth to five ungrateful privileged people who have never had to work for anything in their entire damn lives.”
“My pronouns are, kiss my ass,” he added.
Roseanne Barr during a live podcast in New York City in 2018. It was canceled that year.
Speaking with the Los Angeles Times, Barr criticized cancel culture and accused show business of having a double standard on cancellation.
They didn’t do it to anyone else in Hollywood, although they always [mention] Dave Chappelle and Louis CK’, he said.
‘Well, Louis CK lost everything, but he did commit a real attack. [offense]. And Dave Chappelle was protected by Netflix.
I am the only person who has lost everything, whose life’s work was stolen, stolen by people I thought loved me.
It made the silence. There was no one in Hollywood really defending me publicly.
Barr blamed the public’s angry reaction to his May 2018 tweet on his support of Donald Trump.
Roseanne Barr with an award at the 48th Golden Apple Awards in California
Roseanne Barr in California during the 15th Annual People’s Choice Awards
She was fired from her show shortly after the tweet.
“It was a witch burning,” he told the LA Times. They denied me the right to apologize.
‘Oh my gosh, they hated me so much. I never knew they hated me like this.
They hate me because I have talent, because I have an opinion. Although Roseanne became the number one show for her, they would rather not have a number one show.
“When they killed off my character, that was a message to me, knowing that I have mental illness or mental health issues, that they wanted me to kill myself.”