This Is the Woman Who Canceled ‘Roseanne’

On Tuesday, ABC announced that its popular Roseanne revival was canceled, and now social media is putting a face to the woman behind the cancellation.

Channing Dungey, President of ABC Entertainment and the first African American president of the company, is the woman who made the final call on the fate of the popular and successful Roseanne revival after just a single season of the series being back on air.

“Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant, and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show,” Dungey said in an official statement Tuesday afternoon.

The cancellation came as a direct result of a racist and Islamaphobic joke that series star Roseanne Barr penned in the early hours of Tuesday morning, in which she likened former Barack Obama aide Valerie Jarrett to a Planet of the Apes character.

“Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=[Valerie Jarrett],” read the tweet, which has since been deleted.

Born to American parents in Shiraz, Iran, where her father ran a children’s hospital, Jarrett and her family moved back to the United States when she was 7 years old, where as an adult, she worked as the Director of the Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs in the Obama administration from 2009-2017.

The comment immediately drew backlash from every side of social media and even prompted several of Barr’s co-workers immediately renounce the tweet, including Wanda Sykes, who announced that she would not be returning to the show.

Barr initially attempted to defend her tweet, stating, “ISLAM is not a RACE, lefties. Islam includes EVERY RACE of people,” though she later apologized to Jarrett and anyone else who was offended by her tweet, writing, “I apologize. I am now leaving Twitter.”

“I apologize to Valerie Jarrett and to all Americans. I am truly sorry for making a bad joke about her politics and her looks. I should have known better. Forgive me-my joke was in bad taste,” she added.

Although the revival of the popular sitcom, which originally aired from the late ’80s and into the ’90s, was only on air for a single season, it brought the network huge success, even earning ABC the title of being host to TV’s No. 1 show, a distinction that it had not enjoyed for 18 years.

That distinction, in combination with its consistent high ratings, has already sparked speculation that another network will pick up the revival series following its cancellation.