Roseanne Barr has claimed she was asked appear on The Conners as a ghost.
Roseanne Barr claimed she was invited back to The Conners
The 72-year-old actress had the plug pulled on the Roseanne revival after just one season in 2018 after she sent a tweet which compared former presidential aide Valerie Jarrett to an ape, and the spin-off show was launched instead with a number of her castmates shortly afterwards.
And after her alter ego was killed off from a drug overdose, Roseanne was outraged when she was invited by ABC to guest star on The Conners.
Speaking in new documentary Roseanne is America, she said: “They called me and asked me if I would like to come back as a guest star. ‘You’re coming back as a ghost.’
“You’re asking me to come back to the show that you f****** stole from me and killed my ass, and now you want me to show up because you got s*** f****** ratings and play a ghost? I’m gonna be bowling that f****** week.”
And Roseanne found the way her character was killed off “staggering”.
She said: “Within three weeks, they revived the show as The Conners, and of course they killed off my character Roseanne in an opioid overdose.
“Which was staggering because Glenn Quinn, who played Becky’s husband, actually died of an opioid overdose.”
Roseanne previously criticised ABC for the way the handled the fallout from her tweet, which she had clamed was written late at night when she had taken Ambien.
Roseanne – who also claimed she had no idea Valerie was black when she posted – told the Los Angeles Times newspaper: “It was a witch-burning. They denied me the right to apologise. Oh my God, they just hated me so badly.
“I had never known that they hated me like that. They hate me because I have talent, because I have an opinion.
“Even though Roseanne became their Number one show, they’d rather not have a number one show … When they killed my character off, that was a message to me – knowing that I’m mentally ill or have mental health issues – that they did want me to commit suicide.”
The comic co-created Roseanne with wwriter and producer Matt Williams and the show – which also starred the likes of John Goodman, Laurie Metcalf and Sara Gilbert – ran from 1988 to 1997 before being revived for a season in 2018.
The Conners aired for seven seasons before coming to an end in April 2025.
