Roseanne Barr Unapologetically Tells Haters What They Can Do

Roseanne Barr is done with apologies. The former Roseanne star, who held her first TV interview Thursday night since being fired by ABC, has a message for people who don’t appreciate her jokes: “F— off.”

When asked by TMZ if a joke she made about Valerie Jarrett’s hair distracted from other points she made on Fox News‘ Hannity Thursday night, Barr responded, “They hate jokes. They should f— off.”

Barr was axed from ABC and her sitcom was canceled in May after she sent a tweet comparing Jarrett, a former Obama adviser, to an ape.

During her hour-long interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Barr apologized to Jarrett (after initially protesting and saying she had already apologized) and disputed the idea that she is racist. The 65-year-old maintained that her tweet was not racist and that instead it was “political.”

The tweet, aimed at Iran-born Jarrett, who is of African-American descent, said, “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.

She 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 tell her side of the story, 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.

After much pressing from Hannity asking if Barr would apologize to Jarret (“I already have said I’m sorry for two months,” she initially protested), Barr apologized.

“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.”

She also said that ABC, which ordered a Barr-less spinoff for the fall, called The Conners, “should be so lucky” to get ratings as high as Roseanne’s ever again. Not only was Roseanne the highest-rated comedy on ABC, it was the No. 1-rated, most-watched comedy on all of television.

“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 Hannity. “[ABC] should be so lucky that they’ll ever get anywhere near that.”