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Roseanne Barr asked fans not to “defend me” during her first interview following her racist tweet that caused ABC to abruptly cancel the revival of Roseanne.
Barr opened up about the situation in a new interview on Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s podcast, where Barr said, “It’s really hard to say this, but I didn’t mean what they think I meant.”
She continued, “I don’t want to run off and blather on with excuses, but I apologize to anyone who thought, or felt offended and who thought that I meant something that I, in fact, did not mean. It was my own ignorance, and there’s no excuse for that ignorance.”
The actress and comedian then became tearful as she said, “I definitely feel remorse.”
She added, “I’m a lot of things, I’m a loud mouth and all that stuff, but I’m not stupid, for God’s sake. I never would have wittingly called any black person…a monkey.”
Even though the interview was only released on Sunday, June 24, it has been reported that it was actually recorded only two days after the sitcom was cancelled on May 29, with ABC Entertainment Channing Dungey stating, “Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show.”
Barr later said that the tweet was a result of “Ambien tweeting,” and then later added that her tweet was not racist but was actually “about anti-semitism.”
“I ask people if you look at my tweet don’t defend me. I’ve done something egregious and I don’t want to be defended. I don’t want to get any more racism going from what I did, I don’t want that. I don’t want to be defended,” Barr added.
Last week, ABC made the big announcement that they had officially greenlit a spinoff series called The Conners after reaching an agreement with Roseanne Barr that she would no longer be involved in the franchise either financially or creatively.