Roseanne Barr Incites Fury With Racist Tweet, and Her Show Is Canceled by ABC

Months before her show’s return, Ms. Barr said that her children had taken her social media accounts away from her.

[In ending “Roseanne,” an ABC executive makes her voice heard and becomes an instant celebrity]

But as viewers flocked to “Roseanne,” Ms. Barr returned to Twitter. One of Ms. Barr’s messages accused a survivor of the high school shooting in Parkland, Fla., of giving a Nazi salute; another involved a conspiracy theory about Mr. Trump quietly breaking up a child sex trafficking ring including prominent Democrats.

“You can’t control Roseanne Barr,” Mr. Sherwood said in an interview with The New York Times in March, when asked about her Twitter account. “Many who have tried have failed.”

But there were other sources of controversy.

The revival’s third episode featured a joke about two ABC comedies with diverse casts, “black-ish” and “Fresh Off the Boat.” Ms. Barr’s character and her husband, Dan, played by John Goodman, wake up on the their living room couch, having fallen asleep in front of the television. “We missed all the shows about black and Asian families,” Dan Conner said. To laughter from the show’s studio audience, Roseanne Conner responded, “They’re just like us. There, now you’re all caught up.”

The joke prompted an outcry but ABC defended the show. “It certainly wasn’t meant to offend,” Ms. Dungey said this month. “I do stand by the ‘Roseanne’ writers.”

Even as “Roseanne” experienced success, ABC’s relationship with the “black-ish” showrunner, Kenya Barris, deteriorated, in part because of a decision to pull an episode of the show not long before it was set to air. Mr. Barris is in negotiations to leave his ABC contract and begin working with Netflix.

“Roseanne” will probably finish the 2017-18 television season as the No. 3 rated show, behind two NBC programs: “Sunday Night Football” and “This is Us.” More than 18 million people on average have watched “Roseanne” this season, according to Nielsen’s delayed viewing data.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/business/media/roseanne-barr-offensive-tweets.html?partner=rss&emc=rss