ABC may have moved on, but Roseanne Barr sure hasn't.
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In her new documentary, Roseanne Barr is America, the 72-year-old comic claimed she turned down an offer to return to The Conners -- not out of schedule conflict, but pure defiance.
"They called me and asked me if I would like to come back as a guest star," Barr said in the film, directed by Joel Gilbert. "You're coming back as a ghost."
Her response? Vintage Roseanne.
"You're asking me to come back to the show that you f—ing stole from me and killed my ass," she continued, "and now you want me to show up because you got sh*t f—ing ratings and play a ghost."
Her final excuse? "I'm gonna be bowling that f—ing week."
Roseanne Buried by Cancel Culture
ABC's revival of Roseanne in 2018 was a monster hit, until it wasn't. The reboot, fueled by nostalgic momentum and middle-America appeal, was canceled after just one season. The cause: a racist tweet Barr posted about Valerie Jarrett, a former advisor to President Obama.
ABC President Channing Dungey swiftly condemned the message, calling it "abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values." The network didn't just cut ties, it gutted the show's core, axed Barr, and retooled the series as The Conners.
Enter the Ghost
The Conners writers wasted no time erasing Roseanne from their new world. In the series premiere, the character was killed off via an accidental opioid overdose -- an eyebrow-raising move, given that Glenn Quinn (who played Becky's husband Mark in the original series) had died of the same cause in real life.
"That was staggering," Barr said in the documentary. "Glenn actually died of an opioid overdose, and they wrote the same death for my character."
ABC forged ahead anyway. The Conners ran for seven seasons and wrapped in April. But even then, Roseanne loomed large.
In the series finale, Dan (John Goodman) attended a deposition as the family pursued a wrongful death lawsuit against Big Pharma. Later, Dan, Darlene (Sara Gilbert), Becky (Lecy Goranson), and Jackie (Laurie Metcalf) visited Roseanne's grave in a rare direct acknowledgment of the character's absence.
Producers: We Had to Say Something
According to showrunner Bruce Helford, bringing Roseanne back, even symbolically, wasn't a decision taken lightly.
"I have to say, I was a little nervous," Helford told The New York Post. "There was so much backlash about her not being on the show."
Executive producer Dave Caplan echoed that sentiment, saying, "Not talking about Barr in the spinoff would have felt really wrong, and really shortchanging the audience."
Barr, unsurprisingly, doesn't buy the closure.
She maintains that her firing was politically motivated and has claimed that ABC spied on her and tried to silence her for supporting Donald Trump. "God told me to tweet it," she's said of the original message that got her canned.
