Roseanne Barr is still mad at ABC and Sara Gilbert.
Of course we already knew that; The comedian returned to stand-up earlier this year with a Fox Nation special subtly titled “Cancel This!” and used her comeback tour as an opportunity to release a few new soundbits, in which she denounced her former home radio station for firing her in 2018 for a tweet about Valerie Jarrett. Now it seems Barr has returned to goading her former Roseanne co-star as well.
During an appearance this week on Megyn Kelly’s SiriusXM show, the comedian said, “It wasn’t enough [Gilbert] She stabbed me in the back and did what she did to me there, but then she went on her talk show every day and talked about how shocked she was by my racism.”
“It was every day,” Barr added, referencing Gilbert’s alleged comments about her on The Talk. “I did this show when it needed a guest on the sweeps; I went there every time she asked me.”
Barr remembered calling Gilbert once; She lowered her tone, harsher, as she repeated her warning, “You better shut the fuck up about me.” I’m telling you, you better shut your fuckin mouth.”
“And she did,” Barr concluded, later adding, “My voice can be very scary.”
ABC fired Barr in 2018 after she posted a tweet mocking Barack Obama’s senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, sneering, “Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes had a baby =vj.” Gilbert, who wrote The Talk and used to be its co-host, Barr called the tweet “disgusting” at the time. The network fired Barr hours after she posted her tweet.
But Barr doesn’t seem to think her tweet was to blame at all. Speaking to Kelly about Gilbert, the comedian said, “It was her tweet that canceled the show.”
At another point during her interview, Barr told Kelly that she believes ABC “wanted me to kill myself.” The comedian also claimed that “all” of her friends shared this belief. (She cited Norm MacDonald and Bob Einstein as examples, both of whom are now deceased.) “They said, ‘They’re trying to get you to commit suicide,'” Barr said.
This is far from the first time Barr has spoken out about her firing or Gilbert. Perhaps her most glamorous quote came in 2019, when she said her former co-star “will never get enough until she eats my liver up with a fine Chianti.” (A rep for Gilbert didn’t respond to Vanity Fair’s request at the time for comment.) She has also repeatedly voiced her grievances against ABC and other actors in the debacle.
In February of this year, during an appearance on Fox News, Barr slammed ABC for allegedly refusing to “allow me to go on one of her other shows and apologize for her tweet” — which she blamed at the time on Ambien. (Alongside Gilbert, Barr has also claimed that Michelle Obama was responsible for her firing.)
Barr believes ABC should have invited her to its shows, whose hosts have faced “more egregious” firestorms themselves. your main example? Jimmy Kimmel, who apologized in 2020 for previous skits in which he wore blackface.
“Jimmy Kimmel and his [former] Girlfriend Sarah Silverman, they did blackface and [ABC] “I never said, ‘It’s wrong that you did that,'” Barr said on Fox News in February. “And they just let it be.”
She, on the other hand, doesn’t seem ready to give up anything that easily.