Lowering the Barr

Tom Arnold says tweets indicate self-sabotage

Roseanne Barr never wanted to make a second season of her revived sitcom, according to her ex-husband Tom Arnold.

ABC bosses pulled the plug on Barr after she posted a racist tweet aimed at former U.S. president Barack Obama’s aide Valerie Jarrett on Tuesday, and Arnold, who was once a writer on the show, admits he wasn’t surprised by the controversy.

“It had to happen,” Arnold tells The Hollywood Reporter. “She wanted it to happen, if you saw how her tweets escalated this weekend.”

Arnold, who was married to Barr from 1990 to 1994, insists TV bosses should have taken her phone away if they wanted to avoid what happened, when his ex attacked Jarrett, an African-American.

“ABC lost maybe $1 billion from this. This show was grinding out money hand over fist and they lost it all because somebody didn’t say, ‘Get that phone out of her hand,’” Arnold says. “She’s not going to go on TV and say these things, but you put that phone in her hand, and she is a loose cannon.”

Arnold claims he even suggested to family and crew members that someone should take Barr’s phone away: “I said, ‘Look, someone has got to tell her that Donald Trump doesn’t carry his own phone. He may say the tweet, but someone is typing it in,’” he said.

“She needed someone to wrangle her in and take her phone.”

He also said he drafted a statement informing fans that Barr was going to spend less time on Twitter, but the idea was rejected by those closest to his ex.

“I wrote a whole thing for her a month ago and sent it over, that said, ‘I am going to take a step back, it was fun at first, but now I can see how much negativity there is out there and people are getting hurt and I am going to take a step back and I am hoping my fans will too.’”

And then if her crazy tweets came out, she could point to that and say, ‘But I have taken a step back.’”