Whitney Cummings Claims ‘Roseanne’ Intern Reported Her to HR for Saying ‘Merry Christmas’

Whitney Cummings was one of the key player behind the scene of the short-lived Roseanne revival, and she’s just revealed she got in a bit of trouble behind-the-scenes while working on it. Cummings served as co-showrunner for Roseanne when it was first revived with Roseanne Barr in the titular role. She eventually departed the series before it was canceled and then retooled without Barr into The Conners. While in this role, she caught some flack for telling one of the staff members, an intern, “Merry Christmas.”

“Last year, I was working on a TV show, got in trouble with human resources for saying ‘Merry Christmas’ to an intern,” Cummings told Conan O’Brien on Wednesday’s episode of Conan. “That’s true. I was leaving … I was like, ‘Bye, guys. Merry Christmas.’ Like just a formality, what you would say. I come back, like, June 6th. HR calls me and they’re like, ‘Hey, we need to talk to you. One of the interns is pissed off that you said ‘Merry Christmas.’”

Cummings was shocked by the ordeal, thinking nothing of her comment.

“I don’t even care how your Christmas was,” she said.

It turns out the intern was agnostic and took offense to the Christian-holiday-centric message. Cummings flipped over the complaint, being as she had no information about the intern’s personal life.

“I was like, no, no, no, no, no. You do not get to do that,” she said. “Because had I known that this person was agnostic, that would mean we were in a relationship, like, that would mean we were intimately connected.”

She added, “I should not know who believes in God and who doesn’t. I also can’t guess either, you know?”

Cummings hasn’t shied away from discussing her time working on Roseanne, even during dicier times. After the revival was scrapped due to a racist remark made by Barr, Cummings expressed her disappointment, hoping the series’ legacy could live on somehow.

“I don’t even know what to say other than it’s a real shame for everyone. All the cast and crew are so proud of all the work we did,” Cummings told TMZ in June 2018. “I think that everyone is just so desperate to preserve the legacy of a show that touched so many people…everyone’s trying to stop the bleeding and preserve all the damage that has been done.

She added, “My heart’s broken about it so I don’t really have words at the moment. Maybe they can salvage the legacy but if it benefits [Barr] financially…it’s a bad move.”