Roseanne Barr on being Ambien 'sober' and why she won't talk to Sara Gilbert

Taryn Ryder
Updated ·3 min read
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It's been over a year since Roseanne Barr's tweet about Valerie Jarrett got the comedian fired, but she is planning a comeback. Ahead of Barr’s upcoming comedy tour with Andrew Dice Clay, the former Roseanne star talked with DailyMailTV about how she's in a much better place these days.

"I've been [Ambien] sober for a year and a half since I got fired," she revealed. "I haven't used Ambien and my life is really, really so much better and I really would like people to understand that."

In May 2018, Barr referred to Jarrett, who is African-American, as the offspring of the "Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes." In deleted tweets, the comedic actress claimed she was on Ambien when she wrote the initial message. ("Not giving excuses for what I did [tweeted] but I’ve done weird stuff while on ambien-cracked eggs on the wall at 2am etc," she tweeted at the time.) The manufacturer of Ambien stated "racism is not a known side effect" of the medication.

"That's a very powerful drug that does a lot of negative harm to people who use it. I haven't used it since my Ambien tweet and you've got to be real careful," Barr continued. "It makes you do whack stuff."

ABC swiftly canceled Roseanne and rebooted the show as The Conners — with the cast intact minus its original star and mastermind. Barr previously blamed her former cast mate Sara Gilbert, for the show's cancellation and it's an assertion Barr doubled down on to DailyMailTV. Amid the initial controversy Gilbert called Barr's comments "abhorrent," which Barr said was the nail in the coffin.

"That's the tweet that got the show canceled to be honest," Barr declared, adding she has no interest in talking with her former on-screen daughter.

"When somebody just doesn't care how their actions affect you, what's there to talk about?" she continued. "There's nothing to talk about."

Barr claimed ABC used the Jarrett tweet "as an excuse to steal [her] life's work." The actress said she has never watched an episode of the spinoff, which is heading into its second season, and will only watch reruns of the original series.

"When it happened it was like I thought I was gonna lose my life." she explained. "It was devastating and horrible and is unprecedented too that they would do that to me."

Barr still believes her support of President Trump had something to do with being fired, too. "It was a perfect storm," she noted. "That's what I think, just the perfect storm at the perfect time. Kind of a little bit too perfect. Sometimes I think 'was this orchestrated? The whole thing?'"

She continued, "All of Hollywood, they just hate him and they hate those of us who like him. There is no way around it. ... So, yeah, I think they took me off because I liked him and I like him because I'm a Jew and he likes Israel."

The network has maintained Barr’s political beliefs had nothing to do with her firing. Channing Dungey, former president of ABC Entertainment, said at the time "Roseanne's Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show.”

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