‘Roseanne’ To Take On #TimesUp In Season 2
Roseanne has already taken on some hot topics during its nine-episode reboot run—politics, pills, and prejudice, just to name a few. And now it sounds like more hot-button issues will be addressed during the upcoming 11th season of Roseanne Barr’s ABC revival series.
In an interview with TV Guide, Roseanne executive producer Whitney Cummings revealed that producers of the show toyed with the idea of an episode touching on the Time’s Up movement for the current season of the sitcom revival, but opted to hold off until next season at the risk of seeming “opportunistic.”
“It just felt like, ‘Let’s wait until next season where we can get a good story around it’ because it was towards the end of production, and we weren’t going to elbow it into something,” Cummings told TV Guide of addressing Hollywood’s movement against sexual harassment in the workplace.
After the current season’s headline-making episodes that took on today’s political climate and Roseanne’s fear of her Muslim neighbors, it will be interesting to see how Roseanne incorporates Times Up into the Conner family’s storyline. Trump supporter Roseanne Conner (Roseanne Barr) currently works as an Uber driver, while daughter Becky (Lecy Goranson) waitresses at a Mexican restaurant. Roseanne’s sister Jackie (Laurie Metcalf) is a staunch democrat and self-described life coach.
Earlier this year, Roseanne Barr was under fire when she joined hundreds of other stars and wore black to the 2018 Golden Globe Awards as a show of support of the Time’s Up initiative. Some people criticized Barr for showing support for Time’s Up when she also supports Donald Trump, who has allegations of sexual assault and harassment against him.
But with her 30-year history in Hollywood, Roseanne Barr has plenty of her own stories to tell, so it could be high time for a Time’s Up episode on Roseanne. Barr previously told The Daily Beast that she dealt with rampant sexism in her early days as a standup comedian. In the interview, Barr detailed the widespread misogyny she faced as a female stand-up as she tried to make a name for herself in the male-dominated comedy clubs and the late-night circuit.
Not only did Roseanne Barr reveal that she knew many female comics who were allegedly abused by Bill Cosby during his heyday, but the Roseanne star described the “grotesque sexism” she faced as she was introduced at clubs by male comics who delivered crude jokes about the female anatomy as she entered the stage.
Roseanne airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
