Roseanne Barr claims ABC 'spied' on her as network 'monitored everything' she did before 2018 firing

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Roseanne Barr has launched fresh attacks against ABC, her longtime network partner, accusing it of monitoring her actions before her 2018 dismissal.

Barr, 72, had been a staple on the network since her sitcom 'Roseanne' premiered in 1988.

The show, which included stars like John Goodman, Sara Gilbert, Laurie Metcalf, and Johnny Galecki, ran for 10 seasons until 1997. Barr was later fired from ABC’s revival of 'Roseanne' following backlash over a racist tweet.

Roseanne Barr claims ABC executives spied on her and monitored her actions

In a new interview with the Daily Mail published on Friday, May 30, Roseanne Barr accused ABC’s leadership of waiting for a misstep because she supported President Donald Trump.

“They were waiting for me to slip up,” Barr alleged, adding that the left-leaning executives at the network were “spying” on her.

“They spied. They monitored everything I did,” Barr claimed. “They wanted to censor me from the very beginning.”

Barr accused the network of twisting her 2018 tweet about former president Barack Obama's advisor Valerie Jarrett.

“They hijacked that tweet and made out it said something that it didn’t,” Barr insisted. At the time, she had written that Jarrett looked like a combination of the “Muslim Brotherhood + Planet of the Apes,” a comment widely condemned as racist.

Roseanne Barr says her tweet was a 'humorous political statement', takes back apology 

In the interview, Roseanne Barr said her tweet wasn’t racially motivated.

“I’m not stupid. I would never refer to a Black person as the product of an ape,” she told the Daily Mail.

Barr claimed the tweet was about Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, which she opposed.

“The tweet was intended as a humorous political statement and not a racial one. But liberals in Hollywood are so racist, they automatically think of a Black person,” she said.

She later retracted her earlier apology, in which she had expressed regret for making a bad joke about Jarrett’s politics and appearance, which she said at the time had cost her everything.

“The worst mistake you can do is apologize to the left. Then they are on a crusade against you. Once you admit a mistake, they will keep on until you’re dead,” Barr claimed.

Roseanne Barr claims ABC bosses 'hijacked' her show’s conservative humor

Roseanne Barr also expressed dissatisfaction over how ABC handled her show’s content and character.

She alleged the network’s creative team reduced her conservative humor to focus on Goodman’s character, Dan Conner.

“They were aghast. They said people are not gonna go for this. I go, ‘working class people are like this — they are not like your wife. They don’t have servants,’” Barr claimed.

“It’s all just elitists from Harvard. They did think the audience was deplorable, whether Democrat or Republican, at that time,” she added.

Barr revealed she had wanted to show the country’s political divide after the 2016 presidential election, but claimed Goodman refused to play a Republican supporter to deflect from her real-life political leanings.

“John refused. It fell to me. I looked like a crusader,” Barr said.

Barr was also upset about how her character was killed off in the spinoff 'The Conners', which lasted seven seasons and ended in April.

Speaking to the Los Angeles Times in 2023, Barr said, “I can't believe what they did, with all the pain that I went through to bring the show back. And it didn't faze them to murder my character, either.”