Roseanne Barr continued to address the aftermath of her recent racist tweet that prompted the cancellation of Roseanne, writing Thursday on Twitter that she “begged” Disney-ABC Television Group President Ben Sherwood not to pull the plug on the series.
“I begged Ben Sherwood at ABC 2 let me apologize & make amends,” the comedian said in a since-deleted tweet, The Hollywood Reporter notes. “I begged them not to cancel the show. I told them I was willing to do anything & asked 4 help in making things right. I’d worked doing publicity4 them 4free for weeks, traveling, thru bronchitis. I begged4 ppls jobs.”
Barr continued by recalling Sherwood’s outraged response. “He said: what were you thinking when you did this? I said: I thought she was white, she looks like my family! He scoffed & said: “what u have done is egregious, and unforgivable.’ I begged 4 my crews jobs. Will I ever recover from this pain? omg.”
swiftly canceled the highly popular revival of Barr’s classic sitcom on Tuesday following a widespread backlash to the actress’s damning tweet from that same day, in which she compared Barack Obama’s former White House adviser Valerie Jarrett – who is African-American – to an ape (“muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj”). Barr’s agency, ICM Partners, also dropped her as a client, and Viacom announced plans to pull reruns of the original Roseanne from three TV channels: Paramount Network, TV Land and CMT.
Barr originally promised to leave Twitter after the controversy but returned hours later for another tweet spree, blaming her racist post on the insomnia medication Ambien and apologizing directly to Jarrett. In her round of Thursday tweets, the comic wrote that she was worried about the reaction of her young co-star Jayden Rey. “The saddest part of all is 4 Jayden Rey on the show whom I grew2 love so much & am so ashamed of myself that she would ever think I do not love her bc she is African American,” she added in another since-deleted message. “It’s the most gawd awful painful thing. I can’t let myself cave in tho.”
