In Roseanne Barr‘s first TV interview since she was fired from ABC for a now infamous tweet, she apologized to Valerie Jarrett and disputed the idea that she is racist. She also said that after ABC canceled Roseanne, the network “should be so lucky” to get ratings as high ever again.
“I was excited to show that [the Conner] family is [now] multiracial and also lives next door to Muslims whose ideas they don’t agree with. That was what I brought to television and what kicked everybody’s ass in the ratings,” Barr told Sean Hannity on his Fox News program. “[ABC] should be so lucky that they’ll ever get anywhere near that.”
Videos by PopCulture.com
Roseanne was the No. 1-rated, most-watched comedy on ABC and all of television.
During the in-depth interview, Barr maintained that what did her in was “a political tweet,” not a racist one. The tweet was aimed at Iran-born Valerie Jarrett, who is of African-American descent, and her work as an Obama adviser; Barr wrote, “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby — vj.”
“I told ABC this at the beginning: I will always defend Israel,” Barr, who is Jewish, said on Hannity. “So that is a tweet about asking for accountability from the previous administration about the Iran deal” which Jarrett was involved in brokering.
Barr also claimed that she “was allowed under my contract to have 24 hours to correct any mistake” she made while tweeting. She said she asked for time on ABC’s The View to set the record straight, but the request didn’t come through in a timely manner.
“I could fight this [termination], but … no, I’m just going to walk away,” she said she decided at the time.
When Hannity asked what Barr would she would say directly to Jarrett, she initially strayed away from apologizing.
“I would say this, Valerie, let’s discuss this,” Barr said, looking directly at the camera. “Don’t assume that you know what I meant because I think you don’t know what I meant and I would like to make it clearer to you what I did mean. And I would like to find a way past all that to really discuss the issue and to try to find common ground between us.”
When pressed by Hannity on why she wouldn’t directly apologize, Barr said, “I already have said I’m sorry for two months.”
But Hannity pushed on, and Barr looked into the camera again.
“I’m so sorry that you thought I was racist and that you thought that my tweet was racist, because it wasn’t. It was political. And I’m sorry for the misunderstanding that caused… my ill-worded tweet,” Barr said. “And you know, I’m sorry that you feel harmed and hurt. I never meant that and for that, I apologize. I never meant to hurt anybody or say anything negative about an entire race of people, which I think 30 years of my work can attest to.”
The interview came after a strange YouTube interview, where Barr screamed that she thought Jarrett (who she referred to as “the b—”) was white.
In response, Jarrett said on The View that Barr’s comments are not “what keep me up at night.”
“What keeps me up at night are those families being separated at the border,” Jarrett said. “Or our children who go to school worrying about whether or not they’re going to be safe and the parents dropping them off. These are the things that keep me up at night. Not a racist tweet.”
When Sunny Hostin mentioned Barr would be appearing on Hannity’s show, Jarrett said she would not be watching.
After firing Barr, ABC ordered a Barr-less spinoff series called The Conners, featuring her co-stars. The series debuts Tuesday, Oct. 16 on ABC.
