Roseanne Breaks Her Silence on 'Conners' Premiere with Special International Message
In June, ABC announced that its “Roseanne” spinoff “The Conners” would premiere this fall. It will follow the lives of all the characters from “Roseanne” — except for Roseanne.
Comedian Roseanne Barr told her friend Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on his podcast, posted Sunday, that she will be out of the country when the spinoff airs.
“I have an opportunity to go to Israel for a few months and study with my favorite teachers over there, and that’s where I’m going to go and probably move somewhere there and study with my favorite teachers,” she said. “I have saved a few pennies and I’m so lucky that I can go.”
Barr’s reboot of her classic sitcom was cancelled in May after the star posted a tweet that some called racist against an aide to former President Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett.
In order for ABC to go ahead with the spinoff, Barr had to relinquish her rights to the show.
Actor John Goodman, who played Barr’s husband on the show, told The London Times, “She had to sign a paper saying that she relinquished all her rights to the show so that we could go on.”
“I sent her an email and thanked her for that. I did not hear anything back, but she was going through hell at the time. And she’s still going through hell,” Goodman said.
Barr told Boteach, “I lost everything, and I regretted it before I lost everything.”
“And I said to God, ‘I am willing to accept whatever consequences this brings because I know I’ve done wrong.’ I’m going to accept what the consequences are, and I do, and I have. But they don’t ever stop. They don’t accept my apology, or explanation.”
Barr saw signing away her rights to the show as a means of making amends.
“I thought signing off of my own life’s work and asking for nothing in return, I thought that was a penance,” she explained. “Sometimes you ask people what do you think should be done to you knowing what you’ve done wrong, and it seems that people always know what should be done to them.”
“I just knew that was the right thing, and I want to do the right thing because I’ve lived my life, most part of it, to do the right thing for all people, not just Jews,” Barr told Boteach.
However, she added that she is keeping her distance from the spinoff.
“I’m not going to curse it or bless it. I’m staying neutral. That’s what I do. I’m staying neutral.
“I’m staying away from it,” she concluded.
“The Conners” airs on Oct. 17 on ABC.
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