Et Tu, Darlene? Roseanne Barr Says Sara Gilbert Had Her Canceled, Tried to Push Her to Suicide

Roseanne Barr says that she was only fired from Roseanne because her co-star and former TV daughter Sara Gilbert once tweeted an apology for Barr’s behavior — and here we thought it was Barr’s racist-ass tweet that turned the show into The Conners.

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Yesterday, Barr’s pity party/publicity tour took a stop at SiriusXM's The Megyn Kelly Show where she told the former Fox News anchor that Gilbert was responsible for her 2018 ousting from the show that bears Barr’s (first) name. Public outcry erupted after Barr posted a tweet calling biracial Obama administration official Valerie Jarrett a cross between “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes,” and Barr believes that Gilbert's refusal to take her side was a betrayal on par with the stabbing of Caesar.

Following the blowback to Barr’s tweets and with the future of the rebooted Roseanne in jeopardy, Gilbert posted two tweets addressing the show’s fans, saying, “This is incredibly sad and difficult for all of us, as we’ve created a show that we believe in, are proud of, and that audiences love — one that is separate and apart from the opinions and words of one cast member.” 

Barr called this innocuous apology a betrayal tantamount to stabbing her in the back and “repeatedly twisting it.” If that wasn’t bonkers enough, Barr even claimed that Gilbert’s tweets were an attempt to get Barr to commit suicide — so she’s Caesar and Cleopatra.

“It was her tweet that canceled the show,” Barr claimed. “I was just floored. And you know, but she ends up owning my work,” she said of The Conners, ABC’s answer to Barr’s repeated public volatility which featured the rest of the Conner clan continuing on in a universe where Roseanne, not Dan, meets an awkward and untimely demise. “They just tried to kill me, and I felt like they killed my character and my character.”

Barr took the accusations one step further, asserting that Gilbert and ABC executives tried to literally kill her, saying, “I thought they were sending a message over the airwaves because they knew I had mental health issues. I thought they wanted me to kill myself.” Barr said that this isn’t just her own paranoia talking, claiming, “All my friends (thought that) too. They said, ‘They’re trying to push you to suicide.’”

Back here in reality, Gilbert’s decision to distance herself from her co-star’s hateful comments was one of hundreds of thousands of tweets criticizing Barr for her bullshit back in 2018. One might think that Barr’s history of platforming far-right conspiracy theories also didn’t help her case when ABC decided that the star of their most popular show was too toxic to keep on set, but no, Gilbert’s tweets saying that Barr’s comments don’t represent the opinions of the entire Roseanne cast and crew were career-killers and literal death threats.

Despite her decision to pin her firing on everyone who didn’t call a Black woman a Muslim ape, Barr claimed that accountability has never been an issue for her, explaining, “I never thought, ‘Hey, it’s not you. You’re not the problem, you never were the problem.’ I always tend to blame myself.”