‘Roseanne’ axed due to star’s racist tweet
TV stations and some cast appalled at Barr
LOS ANGELES: Walt Disney Co’s ABC network on Tuesday swiftly canceled the popular US television comedy Roseanne after star Roseanne Barr incited outrage by comparing a black former Obama administration official to an ape in remarks on Twitter.
The show, a revival of the 1990s hit Roseanne, was ABC’s most widely watched prime time show for the TV season that ended last week. President Donald Trump has cited its huge viewership as evidence his supporters, who include Ms Barr, want shows that speak to their concerns.
“Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show,” ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey said in a statement.
In a since-deleted comment on Twitter, Ms Barr compared Valerie Jarrett, a former adviser to President Barack Obama, to an ape. Barr wrote that if the Islamist political movement “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby = vj.”
The actress, 65, apologised “for making a bad joke” about Ms Jarrett, who is black and was born in Iran to American parents. Ms Barr’s tweet followed a Twitter conversation referring to a Wikileaks allegation that the CIA spied on French presidential candidates during t he Obama administration.
Ms Jarrett, 61, said on Tuesday that Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger called her before ABC announced the show’s cancellation.
“I think we have to turn it into a teaching moment,” Ms Jarrett said at a taping of an MSNBC town hall event called “Everyday Racism in America” that the network released ahead of its scheduled broadcast. “I’m fine. I’m worried about all the people out there who don’t have a circle of friends and followers coming to their defence.”
Hollywood talent agency ICM said in a statement on Tuesday it will no longer represent Ms Barr.
The fallout from the show’s cancellation also hit its lucrative syndication market as Viacom said it would pull reruns of the 1990s Roseanne episodes from its Paramount, TV Land and CMT cable networks. Another cable network, Laff, also said it was removing reruns of the show.
Hulu said the new Roseanne show would no longer be available on its streaming service.
The original “Roseanne” ran from 1988 to 1997, featuring a blue-collar family, the Conners, with overweight parents struggling to get by. It was praised for its realistic portrayal of working-class life.
The current Roseanne was ABC’s biggest hit of the 2017-2018 season, drawing an average 18.7 million viewers, second only to CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory, according to Nielsen data through May 20.
ABC aired nine episodes of Roseanne from March until May and generated US$22.8 million in ad revenue, or 2.5% of the network’s total for the season, according to iSpot data. In late March, the network renewed the show for another season.
Disney shares, which had fallen on a disappointing debut for the latest Star Wars movie, closed down 2.46 percent at $99.69 on the New York Stock Exchange. Markets were down sharply overall on concerns about political instability in Italy.
Disney’s Iger added on Twitter: “There was only one thing to do here, and that was the right thing.” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, asked whether Mr Trump thought the show should have been canceled, told reporters traveling with the president to Nashville, Tennessee: “That’s not what the president is looking at. That’s not what he’s spending his time on. I think we have a lot bigger things going on in the country right now.”
Sara Gilbert, who plays daughter Darlene, on Twitter called Ms Barr’s comments “abhorrent.”