“I miss her”: John Goodman on friend and former co-star Roseanne Barr
Written by ABC Audio. All rights reserved. on June 26, 2023
John Goodman may have continued on as the patriarch of The Conners family after Roseanne Barr‘s 2018 firing over a racially insensitive tweet, but The Righteous Gemstones star is still standing by her.
Goodman previously stuck up for Barr in an interview with The Sunday Times after her firing, noting he was “surprised” at the response to the tweet, for which Barr apologized. “I know for a fact that she’s not a racist,” Goodman said, adding the comedian and actress was “going through hell.”
The interview was met with gratitude from Barr, who thanked her former onscreen husband “for speaking truth about me, despite facing certain peril from producers and network.”
Over the weekend, Variety asked Goodman if he regretted his comments, to which he flatly said, “No.”
He continued, “At the time I remember going to some kind of junket where they saw the pilot, and then the interviews, and it just turned into attack. And that made me very uncomfortable with them just attacking Roseanne.”
“I felt bad for her. I just feel terrible about the whole thing,” Goodman expressed. “We had a great time. And I love her. She’s just her own person.”
He demurred on whether he’d work with her again, adding, “I just don’t know. I miss her. I wish her well.”
Barr’s Roseanne reboot character was killed off, offscreen, after she tweeted of former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett, “Muslim Brotherhood & Planet of the Apes had a baby = vj.” The show, retitled The Conners, continued without Barr.
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