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After Racist Tweet, Roseanne Barr's Show Is Canceled by ABC
Two months ago, Roseanne Barr was a star again.
Her sitcom "Roseanne" returned in March after a two-decade absence to enormous ratings on ABC. Network executives were celebrating their strategy of appealing to wider swaths of the country after Donald J. Trump's surprising election win and the president himself called Ms. Barr to congratulate her on the show's large audience.
But on Tuesday, that all came crashing down. ABC abruptly canceled "Roseanne" hours after Ms. Barr, the show's star and co-creator, posted a racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett, an African-American woman who was a senior adviser to Barack Obama throughout his presidency and considered one of his most influential aides. Ms. Barr wrote if the "muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj."
Ms. Barr later apologized, but it was too late. In announcing the show's cancellation, ABC's entertainment president, Channing Dungey, said in a statement that "Roseanne's Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values."
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• Hours after ABC canceled her reboot of "Roseanne," Ms. Barr returned to Twitter and posted more than 100 times.
• President Trump responded to the fury over "Roseanne," but not Ms. Barr's racist remarks.
• "She would tweet stuff, then apologize and get off Twitter, and then it would get better. And then it would blow up again." This is what it was like to work on the "Roseanne" show.
• In ending "Roseanne," an ABC executive made her voice heard, and became an instant celebrity.
• The maker of the drug Ambien responded to Ms. Barr's explanation for her rant: "Racism is not a known side effect."
"Roseanne" had ended its successful comeback season last week and was expected to return in September for a 13-episode run. Robert A. Iger, the chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, ABC's corporate parent, shared Ms. Dungey's statement on his own Twitter account, adding: "There was only one thing to do here, and that was the right thing."
The sudden cancellation of a hit show — it had the highest ratings of a new TV series in years — because of offscreen controversy was almost without precedent.
The show brought in an estimated $45 million of advertising revenue for ABC this year, and the network likely would have collected more than $60 million next season, according to Kantar Media.
The move was decided by top Disney and ABC executives, including Ms. Dungey who was appointed to her role in February 2016, becoming the first black entertainment president of a major broadcast television network. She had the backing of Ben Sherwood, the head of ABC's television group, and Mr. Iger, who was involved in the process starting very early on Tuesday, according to two Disney insiders who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe company matters.
On a phone call with ABC and her representatives shortly before the show was canceled, Ms. Barr expressed remorse for the tweet but did not seem to be fully aware of the potential implications for her sitcom, according to a person familiar with the phone call who spoke on condition of anonymity because it was private.
For Disney, there was more at stake than a hit show. The company has been widely praised in recent years as a leader in efforts to combat racial stereotypes through its movies and TV series, whether on "Doc McStuffins," a Disney Channel cartoon about an African-American girl who wants to be a doctor; "How to Get Away With Murder," a vehicle for Viola Davis that led her to become the first black woman to win a lead-actress Emmy; and "Black Panther," which proved that movies rooted in black culture and with predominantly black casts could become global blockbusters.
If Disney did not act forcefully with regard to "Roseanne," much of that work might have been rendered moot.
Ms. Jarrett, who appeared at an MSNBC town hall about racism in America on Tuesday, said of Ms. Barr's tweet, "We have to turn it into a teaching moment."
"Bob Iger, who's the C.E.O. of Disney, called me before the announcement," she added. "He apologized. He said that he had zero tolerance for that sort of racist, bigoted comment, and he wanted me to know before he made it public that he was canceling the show."
It did not take long for ABC to move on. A repeat episode scheduled for Tuesday night was promptly replaced with a rerun of "The Middle." The network also began the process of taking each episode of "Roseanne" off its website, and Hulu, which is partly owned by Disney, is also removing episodes from its service.
The timing of Ms. Barr's outburst was terrible for ABC. She wrote the message just two weeks after it and the other broadcast networks made their pitches to advertisers about their coming fall lineups, with the hope of attracting up to $9 billion in advertising commitments by summer's end.
"Roseanne," and its enormous audience and broad appeal, was the centerpiece of ABC's presentation. Ms. Barr was introduced to the stage at Lincoln Center's David Geffen Hall before any other ABC executive or star. Once there, she joked that her tweets were actually written by Mr. Sherwood.
Then came Ms. Barr's tweet about Ms. Jarrett. She made it in response to a tweet suggesting that Ms. Jarrett may have had a role in helping Mr. Obama in a scheme Mr. Trump has branded "Spygate," a debunked conspiracy theory involving an informant being planted in his campaign that the president has promoted in recent weeks.
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Roseanne, Bill Maher, Samantha Bee: Apologies (Not) Accepted
Crude jokes, slurs, offensive words — here are some of the high-profile TV personalities who have apologized for controversial statements over the past year.
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"We begin with the firestorm." "It's a week full of outrageous and over-the-line comments …" "causing an uproar on social media." "To use that word …" "Comedian Samantha Bee apologized today for calling Ivanka Trump a four-letter word" "The C-word …" "Way over the line …" "Roseanne Barr apologized for a very racist …" "and very offensive Twitter rant …" "… likening Obama White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett to an ape." "Now the comedian says the drug Ambien was partially to blame." "She insisted what she said wasn't racist." "She says she's being censored." "Joy Reid apologized after the discovery of some homophobic web postings she had written a decade ago." "Reid also promoted a 9/11 conspiracy documentary." "Reid's original explanation? Hackers." "I genuinely do not believe I wrote those hateful things." "Kimmel apologized for his part in a nasty feud with Fox News host Sean Hannity." "Back and forth over who is more perverted and who is gayer. Yeah, really." "Making fun of the first lady … Jimmy, you're a despicable disgrace." "Fox News host Laura Ingraham is apologizing for a tweet she sent." "… publicly taunting a Parkland shooting survivor." "Making fun of him for not getting into some colleges." "Now, I give Joy Behar a lot of credit. She picked up the phone. She called me. She was very sincere and she apologized." "Joy Behar mocking the vice president for his Christian faith." "I was raised to respect everyone's religious faith and I fell short of that." "Jemele Hill apologized to ESPN for calling President Trump a white supremacist." "I still stand by what I said." "Late night host Bill Maher apologizing for using a racial slur on his show." "HBO is condemning what Maher said on live TV, calling it offensive and unacceptable." "It was wrong. And I apologized. And, you know, more than that I can't do." "I accept your apology." "An image posted on social media yesterday showed Griffin" "with a fake severed head of the president." "This is art or a bad joke." "The photo even drew a response from the Secret Service." "I'm no longer sorry. The whole outrage was BS." "#FireColbert trended on social media." "… comments he made about President Trump many are calling homophobic." "Anyone who expresses their love for another person is to me an American hero."
Ms. Barr initially dismissed accusations that the comment was racist, defending it as "a joke."
Earlier, Ms. Barr had an exchange with Chelsea Clinton after Ms. Barr erroneously referred to Ms. Clinton as "Chelsea Soros Clinton," a reference to George Soros, the billionaire liberal donor who is often the focus of conservative critics. Donald Trump Jr. shared one of Ms. Barr's posts in the exchange.
She later deleted the post about Ms. Jarrett. About a half-hour later, she offered an apology.
"I apologize to Valerie Jarrett and to all Americans," she wrote. "I am truly sorry for making a bad joke about her politics and her looks. I should have known better. Forgive me - my joke was in bad taste."
Ms. Barr also said she was "leaving Twitter" — but hours later, she was back, retweeting statements of support and links to conservative websites.
"It was 2 in the morning and I was ambien tweeting," Ms. Barr later wrote, referring to a sleep aid that can cause changes in mood and behavior, "It was memorial day too-i went 2 far & do not want it defended-it was egregious Indefensible. I made a mistake I wish I hadn't but...don't defend it please."
Ms. Barr was already being disavowed by longtime colleagues and formerly supportive voices.
Shortly before the cancellation, Wanda Sykes, a consulting producer for the show, quit. Sara Gilbert, a co-star who played Roseanne's daughter and was a driving force behind the series revival, said she was "disappointed in her actions to say the least."
The agency ICM dropped Ms. Barr as a client, saying it was "distressed by the disgraceful and unacceptable tweet."
Even Bill O'Reilly, the former Fox anchor who has been supportive of the show, called her tweet "vicious" and said the series "could not continue with the show without insulting millions of Americans."
Asked on Air Force One if Mr. Trump had any reaction to the show's cancellation, the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, demurred. "I think we have a lot bigger things going on in the country right now," she said.
Canceling the series that quickly was a highly unusual step for a network. When series like "Two and a Half Men," "House of Cards" or "Transparent" were at the center of storms surrounding their biggest stars, the casts were reworked but remained on the air. But none of the stars involved in those shows were as central to their identity as Ms. Barr was to "Roseanne."
Months before her show's return, Ms. Barr said that her children had taken her social media accounts away from her.
But as viewers flocked to "Roseanne," Ms. Barr returned to Twitter. One of Ms. Barr's messages accused a survivor of the high school shooting in Parkland, Fla., of giving a Nazi salute; another involved a conspiracy theory about Mr. Trump quietly breaking up a child sex trafficking ring including prominent Democrats.
"You can't control Roseanne Barr," Mr. Sherwood said in an interview with The New York Times in March, when asked about her Twitter account. "Many who have tried have failed."
But there were other sources of controversy.
The revival's third episode featured a joke about two ABC comedies with diverse casts, "black-ish" and "Fresh Off the Boat." Ms. Barr's character and her husband, Dan, played by John Goodman, wake up on the their living room couch, having fallen asleep in front of the television. "We missed all the shows about black and Asian families," Dan Conner said. To laughter from the show's studio audience, Roseanne Conner responded, "They're just like us. There, now you're all caught up."
The joke prompted an outcry but ABC defended the show. "It certainly wasn't meant to offend," Ms. Dungey said this month. "I do stand by the 'Roseanne' writers."
Even as "Roseanne" experienced success, ABC's relationship with the "black-ish" showrunner, Kenya Barris, deteriorated, in part because of a decision to pull an episode of the show not long before it was set to air. Mr. Barris is in negotiations to leave his ABC contract and begin working with Netflix.
"Roseanne" will probably finish the 2017-18 television season as the No. 3 rated show, behind two NBC programs: "Sunday Night Football" and "This is Us." More than 18 million people on average have watched "Roseanne" this season, according to Nielsen's delayed viewing data.
Tuesday was the first day that "Roseanne" producers and writers convened on the show's lot in Studio City, Calif., to begin work on the next season. According to Bruce Rasmussen, an executive producer, they were aware of Ms. Barr's tweet when they arrived and "were horrified." But they thought it could take a few days for the repercussions to be decided. Instead, within just a few minutes of getting to work, the group of a little more than a dozen people found out the show had been canceled as the news circulated online.
"We were gut-punched," Mr. Rasmussen said. "It was really depressing that that one stupid sentence that she sent out destroyed a whole bunch of peoples' jobs."
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/business/media/roseanne-barr-offensive-tweets.html