Roseanne Barr Speaks Out, Gets Emotional In First Interview Since Being Fired

A month ago, Roseanne Barr made a comment that ended up costing her everything, and now she is speaking out on how she is handling the changes that have been made to her creation.

Barr's tweet upset millions of people, including the executives at ABC, who decided to pull Roseanne from their fall schedule. They weren't willing to continue to support Barr or excuse her behavior, so canceling the show was their only option at the time.

However, this meant that hundreds of crew members and fellow castmates lost their jobs. In order to get those jobs back, ABC began trying to come up with a concept that would allow the show to continue without the character of Roseanne, and to do so they would need Barr to sign off.

As of last week, Barr officially signed off her rights to the show, allowing the network to begin creating a new spinoff called The Conners, which has all the remaining cast members continuing on.

Barr received a settlement at the time, so she will not receive anymore money from the new show moving forward. She was however dropped from her agency, ICM Partners, and has been criticized by most of Hollywood.

But now she has opened up about how this has affected her, and the regret she feels.

First, she talked about how her offensive tweet was misinterpreted

"It’s really hard to say this but, I didn’t mean what they think I meant. And that’s what’s so painful. But I have to face that it hurt people.

"When you hurt people, even unwillingly, there’s no excuse. 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."

She got emotional while discussing her remorse

"You have to feel remorse, not just repentance. That’s just a step towards feeling remorse. And when you feel remorse you have to follow it with recompense.

"You have to take an action in the world — whether it’s through money or other things — to correct your sin. After your heart is unfrozen and after it stops being broken from the pain you caused others, you stop being a robot and you've got to come back to God.

"So it’s remorse, and I definitely feel remorse."

She talked about how the people in her family felt about her words

"I have black children in my family. I can’t, I can’t let ‘em say these things about that, after 30 years of my putting my family and my health and my livelihood at risk to stand up for people.

"I’m a lot of things, 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, [I would never have said] they are a monkey. I just wouldn’t do that. I didn’t do that."

She was crying through the interview, hoping her family and friends know she didn't intend for these comments to hurt them

"People think that I did that and it just kills me. I didn’t do that. And if they do think that, I’m just so sorry that I was so unclear and stupid. I’m very sorry. But I don’t think that and I would never do that. I have loved ones who are African-American, and I just can’t stand it. I’ve made a huge error and I told ABC when they called me."

When it comes to her saying that Ambien was a factor in her tweet, she said, "That's no excuse, but that is what was real."

She talked about how much she regrets her words

"I horribly regret it. Are you kidding? I lost everything, and I regretted it before I lost everything.

"And I said to God, 'I am willing to accept whatever consequences this brings because I know I’ve done wrong.

"I’m going to accept what the consequences are,' and I do, and I have. But they don’t ever stop. They don’t accept my apology, or explanation. And I’ve made myself a hate magnet. And as a Jew, it’s just horrible. It’s horrible."

While the show will continue without her, Roseanne Barr is left feeling remorseful and regretting her words.

The Conners will continue on without her, but now she has to live with the fact that her words destroyed her career.

Source - The Hollywood Reporter