Roseanne blames sleeping pills for comparing White House aide to ape

Roseanne Barr has said she had taken sleeping pills before comparing a former White House aide to an ape on Twitter, and said she is tired of being “attacked and belittled”.

The TV star apologised for the offensive tweet about Valerie Jarrett, which prompted US network ABC to cancel Barr’s show Roseanne and networks airing reruns to pull them from the schedules.

Barr served as a star and executive producer on the ABC show, which was a ratings phenomenon when it returned to US television earlier this year for a 10th series, 0 Roseanne Barr reportedly earned $250,000 per episode after its original run came to an end in May 1997.

The 65-year-old actress and her co-star John Goodman reportedly earned about $250,000 (£190,000) per episode, according to Variety. She earned about $21 million (£16m) for acting, directing and producing the nine episodes of the new series, Slate reported.

The return was watched by an estimated 18.4 million viewers in the US and Donald Trump phoned Barr to congratulate her on the success.

Barr has apologised to her colleagues who lost their jobs after she sent a now-deleted tweet referring to former Barack Obama adviser Ms Jarrett as a product of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Planet Of The Apes. She said she believed the show was axed because of a threatened boycott of the show’s advertisers.