Roseanne Barr says former costar Sara Gilbert destroyed her life
Roseanne Barr apparently does not like Sara Gilbert anymore. Not one bit.
Not since Gilbert, her former costar, tweeted that the “Roseanne” star’s Ambien-fueled comments about Valerie Jarrett were “abhorrent and do not reflect the beliefs of our cast and crew or anyone associated with our show.”
Barr’s remarks, comparing Jarrett to an ape, swiftly got her fired last year from ABC’s successful reboot of her sitcom.
“[Gilbert] destroyed the show and my life with that tweet,” Barr told the Washington Post in an extensive, behind-the-scenes look at her firing published on Thursday, which included coverage of her January travels to Jerusalem. “She will never get enough until she consumes my liver with a fine Chianti.”
Somewhere, Hannibal Lecter from “Silence of the Lambs” is wincing.
Gilbert, who played a key role in getting the reboot on the air and ran with “The Conners” spinoff show once “Roseanne” was axed, was diplomatic in her comments to the paper, noting that she would “always love” her former costar, whom she considers “family.”
“I knew that Roseanne, the person, was unpredictable at times, but she told me this was her redemption,” Gilbert told the Post. “I chose to believe her.”
It seems that the demise of “Roseanne” was bubbling away on the back burner at ABC even as the show roared to TV’s No. 1 spot, with executives well aware of Barr’s history on Twitter and gambling that she would play nice. Well, play nice enough.
“It was always this back and forth of ABC not wanting to appear they were censoring Roseanne but also not quite pulling out the big guns,” James Moore, Barr’s longtime publicist, told the Post. “Going, ‘You’re one tweet away from us canceling the show.’”
At 2:45 a.m. on May 29, 2018, that tweet came — “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj” — and the rest is history.
Barr credits “America’s Rabbi” Shmuley Boteach for checking in on her after the show’s cancellation, when she was, according to the Post, “holed up in her mom’s basement in Utah, chain-smoking and in tears.”
“Shmuley saved my life,” Barr says. “I was suicidal. He was the only person who stood by me and said they were going to destroy me because I love Trump and Israel.”
Meanwhile, “The Conners” reportedly has been renewed for a second season.
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