Roseanne Barr’s ex-husband Tom Arnold revealed in a new Rolling Stone interview that he thought he might join ABC‘s Roseanne revival.
According to the magazine, the comedian thought Barr might invite him to the show since she did ask him to participate in Comedy Central’s 2012 roast. The invitation never came, but instead he learned his agent went around his back to sign Barr. This left him without an agent and he started feeling blacklisted from potential acting gigs on ABC.
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After ABC fired Barr for a racist tweet in May, Arnold sent an e-mail to his agent, asking “Want me back yet?”
Arnold was married to Barr from 1990 to 1994, while Arnold was a writer on Roseanne. He also appeared in 20 episodes of the series.
In May, Arnold told The Hollywood Reporter he felt Barr wanted the show cancelled after one season. He suggested someone should involved with the show or a member of her family should have taken the phone out of her hand to stop her form tweeting.
“It had to happen,” Arnold said. “And I am going to tell you the truth, she wanted it to happen, if you saw how her tweets escalated this weekend. If it hadn’t happened yesterday, this season would have been so awful for everyone every day because she would have felt like she was [being] taken advantage [of], just like when I left the show.”
A month after Roseanne was cancelled, ABC ordered The Conners, a spin-off series bringing back everyone else from Roseanne except Barr. The new series will debut on Tuesday, Oct. 16 at 8 p.m. ET.
During the Television Critics Association Press Tour earlier this month, ABC chief Channing Dungey said the new show will follow the same themes as Roseanne.
“What I can tell you is that thematically we will be focusing on a lot of the same themes that we were in the first nine episodes โ what it’s like today for a family to make ends meet in a world where they might be going into foreclosure, where work is scarce, where there are a lot of different challenges in terms of raising children as a single parent,” Dungey told reporters. “All these issues are going to still be at the forefront.”
Arnold’s new project is The Hunt for Trump Tapes, a Viceland docuseries about his search for more unsavory videos from President Donald Trump. The series premieres on Tuesday, Sept. 18 at 10:30 p.m. Rolling Stone described the comedian as “consumed” with his hunt for more footage in the vein of the Access Hollywood tape that surfaced in October 2016.
Arnold told Rolling Stone that his project has strained some of his friendships, including the one he has maintained with Arnold Schwarzenegger since the two made True Lies together. He said Schwarzenegger’s 2016 Christmas party was particularly painful with “all these fโ conservative Republicans that voted for Trump.”
“I had one friend say, ‘We’re from Austria, Tom, and we know Hitler, and [Hillary is] worse,’โ” he told the magazine. “I swear to God. I was like, ‘What the fโ?’ I got into almost a fistfight because somebody I love said that to me.”
Photo credit: ABC