Roseanne Barr Explains Why She Is Moving to Israel on ‘Dr. Oz’

Roseanne Barr appeared on The Dr. Oz Show on Tuesday, explaining why she’ll be leaving the country during The Conners premiere.

Barr was fired by ABC earlier this year after a string of racist tweets. Her show, which was a massive success in its first season back as a reboot, was abruptly canceled. However, now the series is coming back with everyone but Barr on board, in a spin-off titled The Conners. Barr told Dr. Oz that she could not be around when it finally aired.

“I don’t want to be around, because I’ll get drawn into a negative thing of defending myself or being angry for being mischaracterized and, you know, I don’t … I want to stay away from it,” she said. “I want to stay in a joyous, positive, happy place that I’ve worked my way to again in my life.”

To do so, Barr is heading over to Israel, a country she has visited three times before in her life. She explained to Dr. Oz that in this confusing time in her life, all she really feels drawn to do is study.

“I want to be able to learn [and] speak Hebrew fluently, because, you know, I read very slow,” she said with a self-deprecating laugh. “I know the letters and I love the letters, but I want to speak it. And also I have quite a few teachers over the years that live there and I want to study.”

For ABC to move forward with The Conners, many reports have speculated that Barr would have had to have waived her creative and financial rights to the intellectual property. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Barr did agree to allow a spin-off of her show without taking payment. However, she has shown resentment for the project since the very beginning.

Over the weekend, her grumblings may have finally crossed a line when she revealed the fate of her character on the upcoming series. Barr appeared on a YouTube show called Walk Away, casually stating that Roseanne Conner was dead in The Conners.

“Oh yeah, they killed her,” she said. “They have her die of an opioid overdose.”

Barr’s character struggled with opiate dependency in the last season of Roseanne, taking pain pills in excess and even stealing them from others. The show had a long legacy of tackling topical issues and going where other sitcoms wouldn’t, making the opioid death sound like a logical way for The Conners to establish itself in the same way.

The Conners premieres on Tuesday, Oct. 16 at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.