Roseanne Barr is once again defending the shocking tweet that led to the cancellation of her hit TV show Roseanne in 2018—this time, saying she acted on divine instruction.
In a recent interview with Variety, the 72-year-old comedian and actress said she believed God prompted her to write the infamous post about former Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett, which ignited public outrage and ultimately cost her the leading role on ABC’s reboot of Roseanne.
“The way I feel about it is God told me to do what I did, and it was a nuclear bomb,” Barr said.
Barr claims she had recurring nightmares about returning to the Roseanne set and felt uneasy until what she described as a spiritual awakening pushed her to tweet.
She explained that she woke up beside her laptop, saw an image comparing Jarrett to a character from Planet of the Apes, and felt compelled to post her now-deleted message.
“They looked like Xerox copies of each other, so I captioned it,” she recalled.
The post read:
“muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj”, referring to Jarrett.
Although the tweet was condemned as racist by fans, the public, and ABC—which promptly canceled Roseanne—Barr insists she meant no racial harm and stands by her words.
“Other people were so racist that they thought my tweet said Black people look like monkeys—when it was about Planet of the Apes, which is a movie about fascism,” she argued.
She also maintained she didn’t know Valerie Jarrett was Black when she posted the tweet.
Barr had previously claimed she was under the influence of Ambien and alcohol that night and quit social media shortly after the scandal. However, she now suggests she intended to prompt political curiosity:
“Over 2 million Americans Googled Valerie Jarrett and the Iran deal after that tweet. That was my intent. So whatever.”
ABC rebranded the show as The Conners following the fallout, killing off Barr’s character via an opioid overdose—a decision she slammed as “stupid and shortsighted” in the interview.
“I felt very pissed off that they stole my rights and killed me,” she said. “I don’t know how they answer to their shareholders for canceling me before even one sponsor pulled out.”
Barr also expressed regret over issuing an apology in the aftermath, claiming it only worsened her situation.
“When I apologized, it only got worse,” she noted.
This isn’t the first time Barr has shifted blame. In 2019, she pointed fingers at Sara Gilbert, her former co-star, for publicly condemning the tweet, which Barr said “destroyed the show and my life.”