LOWERING THE BARR EMILY YAHR
Roseanne’s a hit, but how does ABC feel about its controversial star?
ABC executives knew exactly what they were getting into when they hired Roseanne Barr.
The network wanted a show that would appeal to Middle America. So, it went with a reboot of Roseanne, in which Barr plays a Trump supporter — as she is in real life — and clashes with her family over their respective political views.
The ratings for the debut episode were jaw-dropping. ABC renewed the show for a second season just a few days later. Then, mere hours later, Barr sent social media into a frenzy when she tweeted that Trump has “freed so many children held in bondage to pimps all over the world” — a debunked claim that has been circulating on far-right sites. Barr eventually deleted the tweet.
A similar Twitter battle erupted after the second episode, over dialogue about “missing all the shows about black and Asian families.”
“If this has had happened five years ago, people may have laughed it off. But people are not laughing about this anymore,” said Bonnie Fuller, president and editor-in-chief of the entertainment website Hollywood Life. “There have been too many consequences from fake news and conspiracy theories.”
At the Television Critics’ Association Press tour last summer, a reporter posed this scenario to ABC entertainment president Channing Dungey, as Barr was already known for tweeting fringe conspiracy theories: “Is there somebody whose job it is to monitor her Twitter feed in absolute terror in case she says something that’s going to make this new show untenable?”
“I try to just worry about the things that I can control,” Dungey said, eliciting laughter in the room.
ABC declined to comment for this story, and according to industry experts, that’s the typical decision in the TV controversy playbook — there’s little to be achieved by executives saying anything other than, “We’re thrilled that America has welcomed the Conner family back into their homes.”
“They ’re smart people over there (at ABC). They knew. She was controversial the last time, so it’s not like they thought they were getting an angel,” said Preston Beckman, a broadcast executive who worked at NBC and Fox.
“I think that any network who says, ‘Gee, had I known what she tweets or that there were pictures of her allegedly dressed up like Hitler, we wouldn’t have gone near it,’ they’re lying to you.”
Indeed, Barr appeared on the cover of Jewish magazine Heeb in 2009, dressed like Hitler while holding a tray of burned cookies shaped like people. It was called “satire,” but that didn’t really help when those images flew around social media without context.
When the Hollywood Reporter recently asked Roseanne co-showrunner Bruce Helford about seeing the star of his show dressed as a Nazi, he noted Barr is a “staunch supporter of Israel” and added he assumed it was a parody.
“My feeling is people should just watch the show and judge it on its merits,” Helford said, adding Barr’s real-life persona is separate from her character. “Watch the show without the accompanying background noise.”
History shows viewers don’t necessarily care about the behaviour of stars off camera. In 2011, CBS entertainment president Nina Tassler dismissed concerns about Two and a Half Men lead Charlie Sheen, then in the news for trashing a hotel room and reportedly locking a woman in a closet. The year before, he was arrested after a domestic dispute and pleaded guilty to misdemeanour assault.
Even beloved comedy icon Lucille Ball was once caught up in controversy: In 1953, she was investigated during the Red Scare when it was revealed she once registered to vote communist, at her grandfather’s behest. But fans of the show remained loyal. As the story goes, her husband, Desi Arnaz, addressed the audience during a taping to combat the rumours, saying, “The only thing that’s red about Lucy is her hair — and even that’s not real.”
Everyone laughed and the show remained hugely popular, said former network executive and TV historian Tim Brooks.
While these incidents seem like a big deal in Hollywood and the media, he said, it’s important to remember that for most people, television is an enjoyable yet small part of their lives.
“Viewers look to TV not for its politics but for its entertainment,” Brooks said. “If it’s a funny show, they’ll forgive a lot.”