Roseanne Barr Says ABC Asked Her to ‘Get off Twitter’ Ahead of ‘Roseanne’ Reboot

Roseanne Barr has opened up about getting fired by ABC, revealing that the nework asked her to stop using Twitter before her sitcom reboot.

Barr’s sitcom was canceled entirely after she went on a racist Twitter spree last month. Within a week of the announcement, she sat down for an interview with Shmuley Boteach of the Jerusalem Post. She and the journalist have reportedly been friends for over two decades, and the interview got so emotional that the Post opted not to release it right away.

Now, nearly a month after Barr’s posts, her interview with Boteach has come out in both print and podcast forms. It reveals the actress’s mindset after her show’s hugely successful reboot was cancelled, and in it she even admits that she had been warned about her erratic behavior on Twitter.

“When ABC hired me they asked me to get off Twitter, cause I’m always saying things, right?” Barr said, in reference to the Roseanne reboot. In the time since the original Roseanne run ended, social media has become ubiquitous, and Barr has gained a reputation for posting conspiracy theories — often of the far-right and racist varieties.

“And I told them, ‘I promise I will get off Twitter,’ they said ’cause you’ll shoot yourself in the foot if you’re on there,’ and my kids took it away from me, and the whole thing cause they said, ‘Mom, you have to stop,’” Barr continued.

“I told ABC, ‘I have to tell you right now before we sign any papers that I will never stop defending Israel and the Jewish people. I cannot, if I were to do that, I would rather be dead, I can’t do that. So if you want to hire me know that. I will never stop.’”

Based on Barr’s description, the promise to stay off Twitter was informal, and not included in her contract. The actress had no clear discernable gap in Twitter use while her show was on — in fact she live-tweeted most episodes. She had a pattern where she stirred up controversy by promoting conspiracy theories like QAnon, PizzaGate and birtherism, and then she would promise to leave social media before returning within a day or two.

Barr’s interview proves ABC executives were well aware of her behavior on Twitter. When she was fired in May, it was based on a tweet in which she compared Obama administration adviser Valerie Jarrett to an ape, and also implied that she was in the terrorist organization the Muslim Brotherhood.

Yet just a few hours before that, she was tweeting conspiracy theories about philanthropist George Soros, and suggesting that he was secretly connected to the Clinton family.

Barr’s full interview includes more revelations, explanations and tearful apologies. The full audio was uploaded to SoundCloud.