Actress Roseanne Barr told the Jerusalem Post on Thursday that she thinks that anti-Semitism played a key role in her firing from ABC.
In May, Barr was fired from the second season of the reboot of her show, “Roseanne” after she tweeted that former Obama administration advisor Valerie Jarrett is the offspring of the “Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes.” Barr told the Post that ABC “mischaracterized” her tweet.
“What I meant was a commentary on Iran, so they [ABC] purposely mischaracterized what I said and wouldn’t let me explain,” Barr said, “and in haste they did something unprecedented that they’ve never done to any other artist. And at the base of that I think it’s because I am the most vocal person about Israel and BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement].”
Barr added that “I have never in my life done anything racist, and I think my career proves that.”
In September, Barr told a Beverly Hills audience, “I apologized for the hurt it caused people, but also I tried to clarify it and this has been quite a battle in which the right to clarify what I meant has been denied to me.”
Barr will be speaking before the Israeli Knesset on Jan. 31.
When asked for comment, Richard Hormann, ABC Entertainment’s vice president of communications, referred the Journal to ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey’s May statement that read, “Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show.”
