Roseanne Barr reveals God is to blame for her career-ending racist tweet
has tried to deflect accountability for her career-ending tweet in 2018, saying that her faith was responsible for her actions.
In a new interview with Variety, the performer, 72, reflected on the controversy, sharing that 'God' told her to write the message
'The way I feel about it is God told me to do what I did, and it was a nuclear bomb,' she stated.
Barr's shocking 2am comment about former Barack Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett directly resulted in the cancelation the comeback series of her show Roseanne, with network bosses condemning her t weet as 'abhorrent' and 'repugnant.'
Barr insisted she had no idea about Jarrett's African-American ancestry when suggesting that the political aide looked like the 'Muslim brotherhood and Planet Of The Apes had a baby'.
Barr also called the tweet a 'perfect caption.'
She told Variety that she was unaware Jarrett, who was involved in Obama 's 2015 Iran nuclear deal, is black.
Roseanne said she was 'having nightmares' about reprising her role on the ABC show until 'God woke [her] up.
'I had my laptop there in bed, as always, and I opened it, and there was [a post with] a picture of Valerie Jarrett next to Helena Bonham Carter in full make-up as Ari in Planet of the Apes, and they looked like Xerox copies of each other, so I captioned it.'
Barr also denied that the tweet was racist.
'[Other people] were so racist that they thought my tweet said black people look like monkeys when it was about Planet Of The Apes, which is a movie about fascism.
'[Screenwriter] Rod Serling himself said it's about the Jews in Germany. It is not a movie about black people.'
The comedian added that 'over 2 million Americans Googled Valerie Jarrett and the Iran deal' afterward.
'That was my intent. So whatever,' she quipped.
Barr has previously claimed that she was under the influence of alcohol and Ambien when she posted the controversial tweets, before quitting the platform.
The viral tweet led to the cancelation of her show Roseanne, though it later returned as The Conners, without Barr.
Her character was killed off by an opioid overdose.
In her latest interview she said the choice to write off her character was 'stupid and shortsighted', adding, 'I felt very pissed off that they stole my rights and killed me.
'I don't know how they answer to their shareholders for canceling me before even one sponsor pulled out.
'I made the mistake of apologizing, and it only got worse after that.'
Jarrett in May of 2018 said Disney CEO Bob Iger personally contacted her with an apology over the uncomfortable situation.
'He wanted me to know before he made it public that he was canceling the show,' Jarrett said in an MSNBC townhall called 'Everyday Racism in America' that aired in May of 2018.
She added: 'First of all, I think we have to turn it into a teaching moment. I'm fine. I'm worried about all the people out there who don't have a circle of friends and followers coming to their defense.'
'The person walking down the street minding their own business and they see someone clinging to their purse or walk across the street... or every black parent I know who has a boy who has to sit down and have a conversation, the talk as we call it.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
26 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Everyone's a winner: how awards shows became popular again
The annual Tony awards, honoring excellence in American theatre, have never exactly been a TV ratings powerhouse compared to the Oscars or Grammys. Yet the most recent ceremony experienced a surprise surge in viewership, with broadcast viewership up 44% compared to the 2024 installment. It was the largest audience since the last pre-pandemic edition in 2019. That seems to sync up with the record-setting season that the awards were celebrating, where Broadway productions featured a number of movie stars drawing huge crowds (and ticket prices). Yet apart from George Clooney and a few other familiar faces, it wasn't a particularly starry Tonys; Denzel Washington, Jake Gyllenhaal and Kieran Culkin weren't nominated, and there wasn't a single crossover mass-culture powerhouse like Hamilton or The Producers (whose winning telecasts are still the highest-rated of the 21st century). Moreover, Broadway isn't alone; the Oscars experienced ratings growth (part of a four-year upward trend), and the left-for-dead Golden Globes have stabilized. This trend goes back nearly a year, to last fall, when MTV's more specialized Video Music Awards saw an uptick and Emmy viewership jumped up 50% to a three-year high. Awards shows, so often derided as bloated, self-congratulatory ratings ploys, have somehow survived the streaming apocalypse to become broadcast TV's last stand. (Apart from real sports, of course.) In some ways, it makes sense. Very few scripted shows still command watch-it-live urgency, not least because it's not always clear when or if they air live in the first place. Awards shows, however, only really need the date; most of them run for the full prime-time block, and in some cases on multiple channels. (The VMAs are basically shown on the entire Paramount family of channels, as if to scoop up as many errant unconverted cable-watchers as possible.) It seems related to how Saturday Night Live has become one of the highest-rated shows on network TV simply by not bleeding quite as many viewers as its primetime brethren: everyone knows when and where it's on and what its deal is – yet it also doesn't require full and sustained attention to enjoy. Similarly, awards shows sprawl out like a lazy couch stretch, while also breaking into easy-to-follow segments. And despite the ubiquity of shareable online highlights – you probably could have watched three-quarters of the Tonys in 47-second clips on social media – those bits and bobs are really more fun if you're actually watching along in real time, rather than piecing together the timeline like an awards detective. Remember various apps trying to sync up Watch Parties for isolating friends during the height of Covid? Awards shows do that for you: it's live, on TV, ready for your second-screen experience. That's been true for decades at this point, since well before Elon Musk bought Twitter. (If anything, the social media landscape seems more fragmented now than it did five or six years ago.) What's emerged from the great streaming shift is that awards shows function as particularly organic second-screen entertainment, something streamers have quietly and insidiously backwards-engineered with some of their shows and movies. Scripted (shudder) 'content,' material that's clearly designed to be passively consumed while fiddling with your phone or folding laundry, tends toward clunky exposition, repeated plot points, and an overall glossy indifference to tight, engaging narrative. Viewers may not immediately clock the difference, especially if they're performing the designated distractions while watching, but the empty-calorie nature of so many streaming movies and shows may eventually (fail to) add up, especially when compared with so much great work of the past. But awards shows are already like that by design! Hosts, presenters, announcers and on-screen graphics all tell you what's happening, repeatedly. Clips, speeches and live performances even offer catch-up context for whatever plays, songs or movies you aren't personally caught up with. Rare moments of chaos or genuine spontaneity get the instant-replay treatment on social media – as do micro-expressions from just about anyone caught on camera, subject to ridiculous levels of analysis exploiting the fact that sometimes people, even famous ones, affect neutral expressions in public. Network TV has approximated a particularly celeb-saturated Instagram feed without even trying. There's probably a grim irony in the fact that many millions of people would prefer to second-screen the experience of Anora winning a bunch of Oscars than to actually sit down and pay attention to Anora – just one of many movies that is, in terms of merging art and entertainment, a lot more potent and intellectually rewarding than a veg-out in front of the Oscars, even if someone as funny as Conan O'Brien is hosting. It's possible that our modern pop-cultural feeds have been awards-ified without even realizing it, turning too many other experiences into a kind of destructively participatory sporting event. Then again, it's hard to hold that against the Tonys, which offers an annual big-budget sampler of Broadway material to a lot of viewers who don't have regular access to the highest-profile stages in the country. (Hell, some of us media types who live in New York City still had no idea what Floyd Collins was before the ceremony.) If it takes an old-fashioned self-congratulatory awards show to cheerfully force-feed us some genuine culture in the virtual company of others, hey, it sure beats scrolling alone.
Daily Mail
27 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
'The greatest shot in the history of golf': World No 284 produces 122-yard putt on the 'world's HARDEST golf course' ahead of 125th US Open
PGA Tour pro Zac Blair has produced what one fan has described as 'the greatest shot in the history of golf' on the famously difficult Oakmont Country Club course in the build-up to the US Open. Golf stars have been taking to the course - known as the toughest to tackle in the sport - as they prepare for the 125th installment of the major, which begins on Thursday morning. The course at Oakmont Country Club, situated in Pennsylvania, is known as the 'Beast' by members who play on it with regularity. Phil Mickelson once described it as the 'hardest' layout he's played. Rory McIlroy, who recently completed the golf Grand Slam by winning the Masters, has even been struggling on the Oakmont grass during practice rounds, claiming the Pittsburgh venue 'felt impossible' after a recent visit. So, when a video started circulating of Blair - who is ranked 284th in the world - executing an extraordinary 122-yard putt onto the green the notoriously tough hole number one. clip posted by Andy Johnson, a golf fan, displays Blair impressively drilling the ball down the fairway, and it sloped perfectly onto the green into a perfect position to putt home. . @z_blair from 122 with the putter on 1 at Oakmont….pretty good. — Andy Johnson (@AndyTFE) June 10, 2025 The majority of the build-up to the third major of the year has been congested with complaints from the world's best golfers, so it's fair to say that fans have been left stunned by the shot from Utah-born Blair. One particularly amazed social media user, wrote: 'No exaggeration, that might have been the greatest shot in the history of golf.' Another's reaction was short but sweet: 'That's a tremendous putt.' Meanwhile, a different fan was left in disbelief: 'Absurdly good [laughing face emojis]. He hit that left hand low?! Insanity.' Not all fans were left impressed, however. Many X accounts couldn't see what was so special about the shot. 'Mostly luck. No pressure. The shots Rory hit in Augusta on Sunday were way more impressive than this,' read one reply to the video. However, I'm not sure the great McIlroy will agree with the comment. The Masters champion was one of many taking part in the US Open to admit to struggling with the Oakmont Country Club course. On Tuesday, the Northern Irishman - who was beaten to the title by Bryson DeChambeau last year - opened up about the difficulties he faced on a scouting mission at the course last week. 'Last Monday felt impossible,' McIlroy said. 'I birdied the last two holes for 81. It felt pretty good, it didn't feel like I played that badly [on Tuesday]. It's much more benign right now than it was that Monday. 'They had the pins in dicey locations and greens were running at 15.5 [on the stimpmeter]. It was nearly impossible. This morning it was a little softer. The pins aren't going to be on 3 or 4% slopes all the time. 'If you put it in the fairway, it's certainly playable. But then you just have to think about leaving your ball below the hole and just trying to make as many pars as you can. You get yourself in the way of a few birdies, that's a bonus. 'I'm glad we have spotters out there because last Monday you hit a ball off the fairway and you were looking for a good couple of minutes just to find it. It's very penal if you miss. Sometimes it's penal if you don't miss. The person with the most patience and the best attitude this week is the one that's going to win.'
The Independent
39 minutes ago
- The Independent
Arnold Schwarzenegger ‘cries' as he admits Trump doesn't like him during Kimmel interview
Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger jokingly cried after he was quizzed on whether the president liked him during an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Schwarzenegger, a Republican who backed Kamala Harris for the presidency in November's election, was asked by Kimmel Wednesday night whether Donald Trump likes him, as well as what he thought about the Los Angeles riots. 'I think that you're a person who is trusted on both sides and that's very rare nowadays,' Kimmel said. 'I think probably Donald Trump doesn't want you to be trusted because I don't think Donald Trump likes you very much, to be honest.' 'True?' Kimmel jibed while the 77-year-old began to crumple up his face as if he were crying. Schwarzenegger has said in the past that he 'will always be an American before I am a Republican', citing it as a reason for his Harris and Tim Walz vote in November 2024. When asked for his thoughts on the LA anti-ICE protests, he told Kimmel, 'This wouldn't happen if the politicians would do their work. Think about it.' 'The Democrats and the Republican 's have no interest in solving this problem [ immigration ] because they use that to raise money and so what they do is they just keep pointing the finger at each other and then they're surpised if all of a sudden we are using our 'middle finger' on them.' 'It's all bogus because I think we can do better than that,' he added. He added later on, 'The whole thing is to do with deportation. 'Of course, this is a very sensitive subject for me because when I came over to this country, I was living in fear of being deported,' before joking that he was scared he was going to be deported for 'creative reasons.' Having grown up in Austria, Schwarzenegger idolised the United States and the American way of life. 'Everything that I have ever accomplished in my life is because of America – that's the bottom line,' he told Kimmel. Schwarzenegger moved to California in 1968, when he was just 21, despite not being fluent in English, and 'it was a disaster,' he says, because of the political uproar at the time. Yet, he began to pave the way for his career, starting as an established bodybuilder, where he won several world titles after his move. By the 1980s, Schwarzenegger had achieved Hollywood stardom, starring in numerous action movies of the era. He became a US citizen in 1983. A decade later, the star had become increasingly politically active as a Republican, running for the California governorship, where he won, and was sworn in as the 38th Governor of California on November 17, 2003. He was the first foreign-born governor of California since Irish-born Gov. John G. Downey in 1862. During his tenure from 2003 to 2011, Schwarzenegger focused his efforts on reducing California's greenhouse gas emissions, increasing the minimum wage, and updating the state's workers' compensation system. Naturally, physical education and after-school programs were also a core focus of his. He endorsed the After-School Education & Safety Act, which passed in 2002.
