As Kimmel returns, Roseanne Barr decries ‘double standard’: ‘I’ve been socially erased’
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- Roseanne Barr, fired from ABC in 2018 over a racist tweet, aired her grievances about Jimmy Kimmel’s reinstatement in a NewsNation interview.
- “I got my whole life ruined,” the 72-year-old actor told the cable news network owned by Nexstar Media Group, which pushed back on comments Kimmel made last week about MAGA and the suspect in Charlie Kirk‘s death.
Hours before Jimmy Kimmel returned to ABC’s airwaves, Roseanne Barr directed a message at the recently suspended late-night host: “Gee Jimmy, if you would have defended me, maybe this wouldn’t have happened to ya.”
Barr on Tuesday called in to NewsNation to air her grievances about former employer ABC, Kimmel’s suspension and his subsequent reinstatement. The 72-year-old comedian claimed she faced more professional repercussions over a racist tweet about an Obama-era aide than Kimmel and “The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg, the latter of whom was suspended briefly in 2022 for erroneous comments about the Holocaust.
Barr’s eponymous series was canceled in 2018 after a tweet of hers described senior Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett as the child of the Muslim Brotherhood and “Planet of the Apes.” She apologized and said she thought Jarrett was white, not Black.
“I got my whole life ruined. No forgiveness and all of my work stolen and called a racist for time and eternity for racially misgendering someone,” she said Tuesday. “It just shows how they think. It’s a double standard.”
Kimmel, whom Barr alleged “purposefully lied,” returned to his post less than a week after ABC pulled him from his usual slot over his comments about MAGA and the suspect in the shooting death of right-wing activist and podcaster Charlie Kirk. Nexstar Media Group — which owns NewsNation — and Sinclair Broadcast Group announced last week that they would pull “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” from their ABC affiliate stations. The two media groups opted Tuesday to keep Kimmel off their ABC affiliates despite Disney’s decision to reverse the suspension.
Jimmy Kimmel returned Tuesday to his late-night show on ABC, where he addressed his comments on Charlie Kirk’s death and thanked those who have supported him in the past week.
Barr went on to criticize Kimmel and noted that ABC kept working with the comedian despite his past repeated use of blackface for “The Man Show” in the late 1990s and early aughts. He apologized for those performances in 2020. Barr also directed her ire at Sarah Silverman and “The View” co-host Joy Behar, who both were also subject to backlash for their past use of blackface. Her gripes with the network and the other TV personalities segued into a tirade against the left, which she said “understands everything in a way different than myself.”
Barr said she feels “I’ve been socially erased everywhere” and overlooked after her 2018 firing, sentiments she previously shared with The Times in 2023. When asked if Kimmel’s return signals whether “cancel culture is going in the right direction,” Barr simply said “no.”
“I think as their viewership tanks, they congratulate themselves,” she said.
The news that ABC would be pulling ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ indefinitely was reminiscent of the cancellation of Roseanne Barr’s eponymous sitcom, which had been rebooted in 2018, but had significant differences.
During his emotional monologue upon returning to the airwaves Tuesday night — a week after he was suspended “indefinitely” — Kimmel opened by emphasizing the need for free speech. “Our government cannot be allowed to control what we do and do not say on television, and we have to stand up to it.”
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said on a podcast two days after Kimmel’s initial comments but before Nexstar and Sinclair urged ABC to take action, noting, “We can do it the easy way or the hard way.”
Kimmel also said his ability to speak freely is “something I’m embarrassed to say I took for granted until they pulled my friend Stephen [Colbert] off the air and tried to coerce the affiliates who run our show in the cities that you live in to take my show off the air.”
“That’s not legal,” he continued. “That’s not American. That is un-American.”
Colbert was told in July that his show would not be returning to CBS after his contract ends in 2026. At the time, CBS parent company Paramount was seeking federal approval to be sold to Skydance Media. Skydance is now said to be preparing an offer to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns, among other things, CNN.
Times staff writer Kaitlyn Huamani contributed to this report.
