Comedian Jerry Seinfeld argued that ABC’s move to drop the sitcom “Roseanne” after the show’s lead actress and executive producer Roseanne Barr posted a racist tweet was “overkill.”
“I don’t even know why they had to do that,” Seinfeld said Monday, per USA Today. “It seemed like, you don’t need to murder someone that’s committing suicide. I thought the firing was overkill. She’s already dead.”
ABC canceled the reboot of “Roseanne” after Barr tweeted that “muslim Brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj,” a comment that was a reference to former President Barack Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett. Barr issued an apology afterwards, yet ABC still discontinued the show.
However, the network announced last week that a spinoff of the series, “The Conners,” would be begin in the fall to follow the family. Barr will not participate in the spinoff series.
“They brought Dan Conner back. He was dead, and they brought him back. So why can’t we get another Roseanne?” Seinfeld said. “There’s other funny women that could do that part. You need to get the comic in there. I hate to see a comic lose a job.”
Barr discussed the scandal in a recent interview, where she claimed the tweet didn’t mean what people thought it meant.
“It’s really hard to say this but, I didn’t mean what they think I meant,” Barr said in an interview with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach that was posted on Sunday. “And that’s what’s so painful. But I have to face that it hurt people. When you hurt people, even unwillingly, there’s no excuse. I don’t want to run off and blather on with excuses. But I apologize to anyone who thought, or felt offended and who thought that I meant something that I, in fact, did not mean. It was my own ignorance, and there’s no excuse for that ignorance.”
