Roseanne Barr Blasts Bob Iger, Accuses Him of Racism in New Interview

Over the past few years, the drama surrounding Roseanne Barr has escalated, from public outbursts to highly controversial statements. Once one of television’s most prominent figures, Barr’s career took a significant hit following an X (formerly Twitter) incident in 2018 that led to her firing from the revival of Roseanne.

As tensions with her former network, ABC, and its parent company Disney continued to boil, the fiery comedian has finally spoken out again, claiming that the man who was largely responsible for her firing, Bob Iger, is “so racist.”

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In a recent interview with Variety, Barr didn’t hold back when discussing her take on the fallout that resulted from her infamous 2018 tweet. For those who may have forgotten, Barr’s tweet likened Valerie Jarrett, a former advisor to President Obama, to an ape—a comment that was widely condemned as racist. ABC and Disney swiftly severed ties with Barr, leaving the comedian devastated but determined to stand by her actions.

Fast-forward to today, and Barr seems to have reexamined the entire ordeal, flipping her perspective on its head. Rather than feeling remorseful, she now claims that the real issue was not her tweet itself but the racist attitudes of those who fired her.

Barr said that the executives at ABC and Disney jumped to conclusions about her comment, interpreting it through a lens of racial bias.

“They 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. Rod Serling himself said it’s about the Jews in Germany. It is not a movie about Black people, Bob.”

Barr has made it clear that she feels that the decision to fire her was not just about her comment but about political motivations. She insists that the network and its executives, including Bob Iger, had a personal vendetta against her, partly due to her political views.

According to Barr, the controversy surrounding her tweet was used as an excuse to push her out of the picture.

Her feelings toward Iger, Disney’s CEO, are particularly harsh. She has accused him of orchestrating a smear campaign against her, noting that even Jimmy Kimmel made jokes about her after the incident.

I don’t know if he sees anything when he looks in the mirror,” she says of the Disney chief. “And then he gets Jimmy to call me a racist. Kimmel did blackface, right?” (Barr, of course, knows the answer to her own question. “Roseanne Is America” resurfaces the Kimmel clip as well as an even more cringeworthy one featuring Joy Behar in blackface.)

Related: Civil War Brewing: Disney Employees Slam Bob Iger, “I Thought He Had Our Back”

Barr’s frustration with Iger and ABC doesn’t stop at the tweet incident. She points to the cancellation of her show as a deeper example of what she perceives as systemic biases. “I don’t feel vindicated,” she said about the cancellation. “I felt pissed off that they stole my rights and killed me. They didn’t kill J.K. Rowling’s characters. It was so stupid and shortsighted, and I don’t know how they answer to their shareholders for canceling me before even one sponsor pulled out.”

In addition to the firing, Barr reveals that she was also upset about the direction the Roseanne revival was taking in terms of its political content. Barr wanted to make the show more reflective of current political divides, but her ideas were reportedly rejected by ABC executives. She believed that her support for Donald Trump played a role in their decision to stifle her creative vision.

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Barr’s discontent didn’t end with the cancellation of her show. She claims that ABC and Disney made decisions that impacted her freedom of expression, especially when it came to one of the show’s storylines. Barr felt that the addition of a grandchild who was part of the LGBTQ+ community was a step too far, and her objections to the storyline added more fuel to the fire of her fractured relationship with the network.

Despite the turmoil, Barr was not content to simply fade into obscurity. While Roseanne was canceled after just one season, Disney made the decision to move forward with a spinoff called The Conners, which ran for seven successful seasons. Barr’s character was written out of the show after being killed off by an accidental drug overdose, a move that further fueled the divide between the star and her former co-stars.

What are your thoughts on the entire situation? Do you think Disney and ABC were wrong to fire Roseanne Barr, or do you agree with her that her political views played a significant role in the decision? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.