The ABC sitcom The Conners finally came to an end on Wednesday night after seven seasons. Now, Roseanne Barr has broken her silence about the finale through her son Jake Pentland.
Barr’s Son Sounds Off
Barr, 72, was reportedly not aware that The Conners was ending. The show was a spinoff of her own legendary sitcom Roseanne, which she was fired from in 2018.
“We don’t care about cheap knockoffs…we support the real brands,” Pentland told US Weekly. “We only pay attention to things that matter to the American people.”
Pentland later told TMZ that while his mother “definitely got screwed over and written out of her own revival show after a controversial tweet,” she is still happy that “The Conners crew got seven solid seasons of work out of the show she built.”
He concluded by saying that Barr and her family didn’t watch a single episode of The Conners after her firing.
Related: Roseanne Barr Slams Former Co-Star Sara Gilbert – ‘She Stabbed Me In The Back’
Barr’s Firing – The Conners Kills Off Her Character
The original Roseanne ran from 1988 until 1997, and it followed the fictional Conner family. Barr then rebooted the sitcom in 2018. Though the reboot was also a success, it was cancelled months later after Barr posted a tweet about Barack Obama’s former advisor Valerie Jarrett that many felt was racist in nature.
ABC then brought back Roseanne as the new show The Conners with all the cast members from the reboot except for Barr. The show explained the absence of Barr’s character by killing her off, saying that she’d died of a drug overdose. Needless to say, this didn’t sit well with Barr.
“While we wish the very best for the cast and production crew of The Conners, all of whom are deeply dedicated to their craft and were Roseanne’s cherished colleagues, we regret that ABC chose to cancel Roseanne by killing off the Roseanne Conner’s character,” Barr and her rabbi, Shmuley Boteach, said in a statement after the 2018 premiere of The Conners.
“That it was done through an opioid overdose lent an unnecessary grim and morbid dimension to an otherwise happy family show,” they added.
Barr Doubles Down
Barr doubled down on this in 2023. At the time, she said that she was still far too hurt by what happened to ever watch The Conners.
“I just can’t bear it, so I don’t,” Barr told The Los Angeles Times. “When they killed my character off, that was a message to me, knowing that I’m mentally ill or have mental health issues, that they did want me to commit suicide.”
“They killed my character … And all of that was to say thank you for bringing 28 million viewers, which they never had before and will never see again,” she continued. “Because they can kiss my [expletive].”
Watch Barr talk more about this in the video below.
Related: Roseanne Barr Plots Her Revenge, Wants To Take Down Everyone Involved With ‘The Conners’
Barr Is Still Proud Of Roseanne Reboot
Despite everything that has happened, Barr is still proud of the Roseanne reboot.
“It had been very gratifying. I had always wanted a 10th season of the show to tie up everything, to tell the full story of this family as I wanted to tell it,” she said in that 2023 interview. “I came back after 20 years and was No. 1 again. That’s unprecedented.”
“So I started thinking about all the positives of it, my work and the contribution I made to pop culture and television, its portrayal of a woman and her working-class family,” Barr concluded. “They can’t take that away from me. They’ll probably try.”
While Barr’s tweet about Jarrett was certainly offensive, she also apologized and took responsibility for it immediately. That’s why many feel to this day that she didn’t deserve to be fired and cancelled for it. Now that The Conners has come to an end, here’s hoping that Barr can finally put all of this behind her!
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