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ABC announced on Tuesday that it canceled the Roseanne reboot after the series star, Roseanne Barr, posted a series of racist statements on Twitter, including one in which she likened former President Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett to an ape and falsely implied she had connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. The comment outraged thousands of Twitter users and prompted ABC to release the following statement to Refinery29: "Roseanne [Barr]'s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show."
ABC's decision came as a surprise to many who thought the network, owned by Disney, would surely choose ratings and money over making an impactful statement against racism, especially because this isn't the first time Barr has peddled bigoted ideas online. In the past, Barr has used her platform to push conspiracy theories, such as claiming Democrats were running a pedophilia ring out of a pizza shop in Washington, D.C. More recently, she accused David Hogg, who survived the mass shooting in the Parkland, Florida, of addressing the crowd at the March for Our Lives rally with a Nazi salute. BuzzFeed reports she has since apologised for the tweet.
Following backlash Tuesday morning, Barr also apologised for her comments on Jarrett's appearance. "I apologise to Valerie Jarrett and to all Americans. I am truly sorry for making a bad joke about her politics and her looks. I should have known better. Forgive me-my joke was in bad taste."
Her sentiments, however, were far too little, too late for many in Hollywood, including some of her former co-stars like Emma Kenney and Sara Gilbert, who argued that Barr's tweets were "distasteful" and "abhorrent," respectively. Read on to see full statements from some of the industry's biggest names.
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