Roseanne Barr is promoting her new comedy special on Fox Nation by complaining that she has been silenced, telling the Los Angeles Times, “I’m the only person who’s lost everything.”
“Has anyone else here been fired recently?” she says near the top of Roseanne Barr: Cancel This! It’s a reference to her 2018 dismissal from the reboot of her sitcom Roseanne, which followed a wildly racist tweet in which she claimed that Barack Obama’s adviser Valerie Jarrett looked like “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby.” Barr was fired, Roseanne became The Connors, her character got killed off (opioid overdose), and Barr cashed her residual checks in furious silence.
“They didn’t do it to anyone else in Hollywood, although they always throw in Dave Chappelle and Louis CK,” she told the Times. “Well, Louis CK did lose everything, but he committed an actual [offense],” referring to his admission of masturbating in front of female colleagues.
And as for Chappelle’s much-criticized transphobic jokes, “Dave Chappelle was protected by Netflix. I’m the only person who’s lost everything, whose life’s work was stolen, stolen by people who I thought loved me. And there was silence. There was no one in Hollywood really defending me publicly, except for Mo’nique, who is a brave, close, dear friend.”
Barr also suggested that the producers of The Connors hoped she would kill herself. “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. Because they can kiss my ass.”
Roseanne Barr: Cancel This! will premiere February 13th on Fox Nation.
