Roseanne Barr Tells ABC ‘I Ain’t Dead, B*tches!’ As She Makes Shocking Stand-Up Return
Roseanne Barr has a reminder for ABC: She ain’t dead. The former Roseanne star, who was fired from her iconic television show last year in the aftermath of a controversial Twitter post aimed at Obama aide Valerie Jarrett, made her return to the stand-up stage for the first time since the scandal broke last May. And Barr didn’t mince words when addressing her show’s abrupt cancellation.
During her return routine at the Laugh Factory in Las Vegas, Barr first made a shocking joke about suicide, USA Today reports. Barr admitted that after getting fired people sometimes get “real suicidal.
“But I’d never kill myself because that would make too many (expletive) people happy, and I’m not about making people happy.”
But Barr saved her most biting remarks for her former network, ABC. The former sitcom star co-created the original Roseanne series in 1988, and it ran on ABC until 1997. Fast forward 20 years and the Roseanne reboot debuted to huge ratings when it premiered in early 2018, but Barr’s Twitter scandal caused the reboot’s early Season 2 pickup to be scrapped. The show was renamed The Conners and Roseanne’s character was killed off in the first episode.
Roseanne Barr made her feelings about her character’s demise known during her Laugh Factory show in an expletive-filled monologue.
“Dear ABC, when you asked me back to once again bail out your s**t, f***ing, low-rated network, I did so with the same vigor I’ve always rocked, and I delivered you the highest ratings that you’ve had in 10 f***ing years. At the first sign of controversy, you killed me off with a drug overdose. But you know what, I ain’t dead, b*tches!”
This is not the first time Roseanne Barr has taunted ABC with a “not dead” declaration. Immediately following the first episode of The Conners spinoff last fall, Barr took to Twitter to write, “I ain’t dead b*tches!” as previously reported by The Inquisitr.
Roseanne Barr even seemingly did as much as she could to “sabotage” her character’s death storyline. While The Conners plotline was supposed to be top secret, during an appearance on Brandon Straka’s YouTube show WalkAway in September, Roseanne Barr spilled the beans about how her character would be written out of the spinoff series.
“Oh ya, they killed her,” Barr said of the Conner matriarch, per The Los Angeles Times. “They have her die of an opioid overdose.”
Barr later disclosed that she wasn’t “100 percent sure” about Rosanne Conner’s fate but added that her “spies” told her about the death.
After The Conners pilot proved the information to be true, Roseanne Barr and her spiritual advisor, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, posted a message to Facebook blasting ABC for the “grim” and “morbid” demise of the beloved Roseanne Conner character.
The Conners has not yet been announced for a second season, but a renewal is reportedly in the works.
