Roseanne Barr Says Advertiser Boycott May Have Led to ‘Roseanne’ Cancellation

According to Roseanne Barr, ABC’s decision to cancel Roseanne was the result of advertiser boycott and not her statements about Valerie Jarrett.

Responding to a tweet regarding ABC’s decision to cancel its Roseanne revival following racially insensitive statements its lead star had made on Twitter, Roseanne Barr insinuated that the alphabet network was facing pressure from a possible advertiser boycott.

“I heard it was bc of a threatened boycott of the show’s advertisers by ppl who do that sort of thing,” Barr tweeted in response to a fan who pulled out the sitcom’s stellar ratings, which boasted audience sizes upwards of 18 million, to contradict the belief that the series had been canceled purely for Barr’s racist comments.

During the early morning hours of Tuesday, Barr tweeted, “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.”

The tweet, which was later deleted, made reference to Valerie Jarrett, the Director of the Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs in the Obama administration from 2009-2017. Born to American parents in Shiraz, Iran, Jarrett is African-American with no ties to the Sunni Muslim organization known as the Muslim Brotherhood, which Barr’s tweet suggested.

Backlash to the tweet was fast, with ABC announcing hours later its decision to cancel its revival of the popular ’80s and ’90s sitcom as a result of Barr’s “abhorrent, repugnant” Twitter statements that were “inconsistent with our values.”

Although Barr suggested that advertiser boycott was the true reason behind the cancellation, and that President of ABC Entertainment Channing Dungey used her tweets as an excuse for the cancellation. Several sources confirmed that Barr’s history of controversial and racist remarks led to the cancellation, and that Barr’s tweet about Jarrett, considered to be the third or fourth problem she had caused the network, was “unsurvivable.”

“There was no way to come back from this,” a source said.

The series’ cancellation means that many of the actors and those working behind the camera will likely miss out on huge sums of pay, including Barr. Earning an estimated $250,000 for each of the nine episodes of the series’ first revival season, it was expected that her contract for season 2, which was slated for 13 episodes, had bumped up that number, meaning that she will likely miss out on millions of dollars.

Barr’s co-stars could also be out millions of dollars, with reports claiming that Sara Gilbert, Laurie Metcalf and John Goodman had recently negotiated contracts for $350,000 per episode. If ABC chooses to compensate the actors, and possibly the crew, the network will lose out on even more money.