- She's a housewife from Denver, Colorado.
Would you welcome Roseanne Barr?
(audience cheers and applauds)
- Oh, hi.
Oh, hi.
- She came in at a time women weren't really known
for stand-up and she came in balls out,
not afraid to say what's on her mind.
- I've been married for 13 years
and let me tell you, it's a thrill to be out of the house.
- [Narrator] Roseanne Barr rocked the comedy world
of the 1980s.
- Like I tell my kids, sex is a normal bodily function,
like an aneurysm or a heart attack.
- Like every true comedian,
you start out to express that voice inside of you
that says, people wanna hear this.
- If you're fat, just like be fat and shut up.
- It's always been a certain few comedians
that are willing to go up to the line
and to cross over it repeatedly.
- And if you're thin, (beep) you.
- [Narrator] Her hit ABC sitcom
offered a realistic portrayal of a family
in flyover America.
- Well, did you guys have lunch?
- [Man] The show was iconic, she won a Golden Globe,
she won Emmys.
- The Roseanne show was one of a kind.
- It's like (beep) you, this is who I am.
- [Narrator] But Roseanne's outlandish personality
saw her career mired in controversy.
- If you wanna say she was far left or far right,
it was extremes.
- You know, she's a conspiracy person.
- This is crazy shit, why are you watching this?
- (grunts) I'm sick of this crap.
- Ladies and gentlemen, Roseanne.
- I thought the bitch was white!
- Did they fire Roseanne? Yes.
- It's like watching a car wreck.
- She was effectively banished from Hollywood.
- You can't call Black people monkeys.
- The same reason that she got in the business
is the same reason they tried to chase her
out of the business.
- [Narrator] From America's housewife to persona non grata.
- (beep) off, man.
- [Narrator] What went wrong with Roseanne?
- [Announcer] Ladies and gentlemen,
you're about to be entertained.
- [Woman] Getting a laugh is the greatest addiction.
- [Man 1] They want more of it, they want more of it.
- [Bob] She was getting death threats.
- [Judy] It (beep) with your head.
- [Man 2] He's out of his skull.
- [Lorraine] That's what took her down.
- [Man 3] This is a crazy story.
- Well, I'm from Salt Lake City, Utah, and I'm Jewish,
so that's why I'm like this.
- Roseanne grew up feeling to be an outsider
because everybody was Mormon and she was Jewish.
- I prefer to call those people the Nazi Amish.
- [Interviewer] Tell me your name
and what your relationship with Roseanne is.
- I'm Bill Pentland and I'm Roseanne's first husband.
So she felt, as an outsider, like that,
she never felt she belonged.
- That is Utah.
That is where I was born and reared more than once.
(audience laughs)
Thank you so much.
(mellow country music)
- I think a lot of the appeal that Roseanne and I had
for each other is we did come from
basically humbled beginnings.
Roseanne's dad was a Sears appliance technician.
- [Narrator] Roseanne and her father would always bond
watching comics on late night TV.
- Comedy was really sanctified in our house.
Like, especially when Ed Sullivan was on.
- Phyllis Diller.
- I am certainly glad that Thanksgiving is over.
I just can't tell you how bad it is.
Do you know what they call my kitchen? The Disaster Area.
It's either flooded or on fire.
- And my dad would be down there
and they'd go, "Comedian," and we'd all run.
- [Narrator] But Roseanne's childhood
was also beset by personal tragedy.
- You know, you always hear how tough comedians,
their childhood is and their life is,
but I think Roseanne just personified that.
- She was crossing the street to go to school,
I believe she was maybe 15 or 16, and was hit by a car
that couldn't see her because of the bright sunlight.
- Well, I had got hit by a car.
The hood ornament went in my head, in my brains,
and scrambled them.
I had a head concussion and a brain concussion.
Then I started going really out there.
- She was talking about feeling like she was losing her mind
and feeling like it did change the way that she thought.
- I couldn't remember things, you know?
I had forgotten all my math and it was just terrible.
And also, I became way more impulsive.
- After the injury,
she was in a mental health facility for a year.
My name is Jake Pentland.
I am the oldest son of Roseanne Barr.
Everyone talks about it, the people that were there,
that when she came out of that hospital
at the end of the year,
that she was a completely different person.
- [Narrator] Shortly after her release
from the mental hospital,
Roseanne set out from Utah to Colorado.
- She got off the Greyhound bus.
It was right at the motel where I work.
And the first thing Roseanne said to me is,
"Are you Chinese?"
And it was just charming in one way, off putting in another.
I've got a weird sense of humor, so it appealed to me.
- [Narrator] Roseanne and Bill hit it off.
- I thought she was cute, but more than that,
I was just attracted to her sense of humor
and to her joie de vivre.
- [Narrator] The courtship quickly evolved
into a whirlwind romance, marriage and kids.
While Bill worked at the local post office,
Roseanne got a job slinging cocktails at a Bennigan's.
- And she just made snappy answers to the men,
hateful things.
I mean, it was like she could get away
with getting everything off her chest
that she had felt about men and they loved her for it,
and that got her into thinking
that she wanted to try stand-up comedy.
- When I moved to Denver and I was already married
and had three kids, then they finally opened a club there
and said anyone could have five minutes,
so I got started that way.
- I first met Roseanne Barr when I was headlining
at the Comedy Works in Denver, Colorado.
And after my show, this woman came up to me and she said,
"You're who I wanna be."
I laughed and I thought, well, the field is wide open.
- I'm looking forward to seeing your act, Roseanne.
- Well, you should.
(both laugh)
Thank you, hi.
- [Audience] Hi!
- [Narrator] At first, Roseanne's act
rubbed club owners the wrong way.
- I met Roseanne in the early eighties
at a comedy club in Denver,
and her last joke was, let me see if I can get this right.
- Like, I get up this morning and I put my maxi pad on,
adhesive side up.
- And I was on the floor.
- Oh yeah, sure, like you've never done it.
- She was coming from a feminist point of view.
People interpreted it as anti-male,
so both clubs in Denver said,
"You're offending the audience."
- [Narrator] Together, Roseanne and Bill
tamed her raw talent.
- So I went down to our basement,
and we had one of those aluminum Christmas trees,
and then I taped a toy microphone,
maybe one of the kids or something, on a
and we would talk about mic technique.
When would be the time to put your elbow on the top
and take the mic to discuss this?
- [Narrator] With practice, Roseanne found success
in the local comedy circuit.
- Late seventies, early eighties,
it was very unpopular to be anything except a housewife,
or a girl who couldn't get dates,
so if you wanted to incorporate that type of humor
into your comedy,
you had to find a way to do it in a roundabout kind of way.
- So anyway, I live out there in suburbia, you know,
so I practice total sensory deprivation.
- [Narrator] Roseanne's act revolved around a character
called the Domestic Goddess,
a jaded, cynical, gum-chewing every wife.
- Roseanne really spoke the middle class,
the blue collar part of the country,
which is most of the country.
And she spoke to me and I'm not even white,
but I was blue collar.
- It was Rodney Dangerfield-
- My wife, she drives me nuts.
- As a housewife with like a great intellect.
- She was like Archie Bunker.
- The man is the breadwinner
and you women have your bread and want (indistinct).
- Only for housewives.
- I got a real nice two-car garage with a house attached.
No, it's just, no.
- She said the things that every housewife in America
was thinking at the time, but nobody wanted to say them.
- I hate that word, housewife, huh,
and I hate the word homemaker too.
I wanna be called Domestic Goddess.
- It might have been a little raw
because it was still being developed,
but that Domestic Goddess thing,
when she started that, that just took off.
It went to the moon.
- [Narrator] The act resonated,
and Roseanne rocketed from sniping cocktail waitress
to a local comedy sensation.
- She won a local competition in Colorado.
I think it was called The Laugh Off.
I know because I'm from Colorado. It was a big deal.
But she got an opportunity to go to The Comedy Store,
which is a legendary spot in California.
- So we cashed in all our jars and everything
over at the Coinstar and she flew to LA.
- I met Roseanne when she first came to Los Angeles
from Denver to The Comedy Store, and it was quite the debut.
She came out and she played the main room
and auditioned for Mitzi Shore.
- After she comes off stage, this guy comes out,
gives her a card.
It's the talent coordinator for "The Tonight Show."
And he says, "I'm gonna put you on 'The Tonight Show'."
Just like that.
- So what, are you looking forward to going on Carson
or Letterman after this, or any other shows?
- Well, some guy saw me and gave me his card
and told me to do it, so.
- I knew it was gonna change the night
she did Carson the first time.
It was 1985, me and my dad and my sisters
were still back in Denver,
so we didn't know how it was going.
- And my kids love me
'cause I'm kinda like the mother they never had.
- And the phone rang, my dad answered,
and he got off the phone and he said,
"You guys are moving to LA, your mom killed."
- You know, a lot of stuff bugs me about being married.
A lot of stuff bugs me about husbands, you know?
Like when they all the time wanna talk to you, I hate that.
- People looked at "The Tonight Show" as the end-all be-all.
Once you got a "Tonight Show" appearance,
you were well on your way to something.
- But I do have sexual problems, like with my husband.
You won't even believe this, you'll die.
You know what he says to me?
He comes in there, "Roseanne, why don't you ever try to be
more aggressive in bed?"
So I thought about it and everything,
and then the other night, we're laying there
and he reached for me, so I said, "No!"
- [Narrator] Roseanne had channeled her pugnacious,
unapologetic personality into an act
that was ready for prime time.
But deep inside the Domestic Goddess,
a powder keg seemed ready to spark off.
It was only a matter of time.
- Ladies and gentlemen, America's favorite domestic goddess
Roseanne Barr!
(audience applauds)
- Back in those days, there was an absolute progression
you had to make.
The Comedy Store, "The Tonight Show," your own sitcom.
And Roseanne knocked those doors down, like, instantly.
- It's the late eighties, you've seen "The Cosby Show,"
you've seen "Family Ties," it's aspirational.
These families, they have money.
Along comes Roseanne
and you're seeing a lot of the living rooms
that many Americans are used to sitting in and watching TV.
- She became this bigger than life voice out of obscurity,
and then this amazing sitcom.
I mean, she started this whole idea of,
we don't have to create a show,
the comics are creating them themselves
by just being who they are.
- [Narrator] Produced for ABC,
"Roseanne" upturned the "Leave It to Beaver" image
of middle class America.
- A beautiful white mom dressed to the nines
with an apron on, her makeup done in the house,
get the solid (beep) out of here.
Roseanne represented what was real in this world.
- Dad, did you know Mom knows everything?
- That's just one of the little things we have to live with
in this family.
- I think "Roseanne" blew the doors open
'cause you just hadn't seen anything like that.
- Cindy Clark's mother let her babysit when she was nine.
- Well, Cindy Clark's mom is a drunken slut.
- I mean, there was a TV Guide cover
where she was dressed up as Lucille Ball,
like she was the new Lucy, which makes sense.
I mean, Lucille Ball knocked down huge barriers for women.
That show was huge and Roseanne did the same.
It was massive.
- It was a very brilliant show,
simply because it had the balls
to really shine a light on society in the most honest
and raw and real way and make you laugh.
- You could never tell anybody gives a damn
about anything around here.
All we do is yell at each other and make jokes.
- Well, Dan, I'm really upset
that you've forgotten the occasional fist fight.
- That's perfect, Roseanne.
- [Narrator] Millions tuned in to watch "Roseanne"
and see their own lives reflected on screen.
- The show was a hit right out of the box,
and despite the success, there was a,
shall I say a disconnect between Roseanne and her writers.
- You know what I mean?
- Sometimes things get too slick in the writing of it
and Roseanne can smell it out like that.
- I remember she told me the guy who created the show
said to her one day, "Roseanne wouldn't say that."
She goes, "Are you outta your mind? I am Roseanne!"
- [Narrator] Tensions between Roseanne
and the network mounted.
Rumors circulated that ABC was plotting
to remove Roseanne from her own show.
- Me and Rosie are sitting there talking on the sound stage.
"How far do we wanna push it?"
And the assistant stage manager walks up to me
and he's got a pad, and he writes on it,
"The boom mic over your head is live."
And we just thought, holy shit.
I think everybody that would've been listening,
they were trying to get material enough
to fire her for not cooperating.
I know that their lawyer called us at home and said,
"You're gonna end up in a trailer park again
if you don't play ball, you read the lines as written."
And Roseanne goes, "This isn't my character."
(people chattering faintly)
- Well, what's the deal?
- [Narrator] There was even a second season plot line
conceived as a contingency plan.
- On the second season,
this one called "An Officer and A Gentleman,"
and in it, Jackie is coming over to the house,
helping Dan take care of the kids while Roseanne's away
for a couple of weeks.
In this scene, Jackie and Dan,
they're talking in a kitchen about
that they had a mutual attraction towards each other
in high school.
- You know, I used to have a crush on you
in a big way back then.
- Ha, you did? - Yeah.
- And the producer that wrote that episode called me at home
and he said, "We're running this up the flag pole
to see if we can get rid of her
and whether the rest of the cast can carry the show."
- See you later, honey.
- Okay, dear!
- How do we move Roseanne to the back of the bus?
Well, you know that quote, "You're not paranoid
if they really are out to get ya."
She felt that very strongly at times.
- We weren't working with these people,
we were working against them.
- [Narrator] Roseanne's behind the scenes battles
were becoming headline news.
- You know, where there's smoke, there's fire.
I did an episode of "Roseanne."
I had people saying, "Oh, it's gonna be like this."
There, there. Calm down, it's okay.
There was chit-chat all the time.
- Being a powerful woman in Hollywood is like such a threat.
And particularly with Roseanne, she was a force, right?
And as people would say, "She's brash,
she's angry, she's caustic."
- She knew how to play it back,
and we just had to ride it out
until the show aired in October.
Then we knew once it hit,
Roseanne's face was what was up there
and we would get what we wanted.
- [Narrator] Roseanne Barr was now a household name,
but her public image seemed increasingly volatile.
This was never more apparent than in 1990
when Roseanne divorced Bill
after falling for a fellow comedian.
- The relationship between my mother and Tom Arnold
was fire and gasoline.
- [Roseanne] Now get out there
and warm them up for me, babe.
(audience applauds)
- A year ago, you had people come to you and say,
"Watch out for this guy."
- Well, Tom did get arrested for urinating on a McDonalds.
- They were partying pals, and that partying,
it became very volatile, they had a lot of arguments.
I mean, they would have fights on the set of her show,
but include everyone into these fights
and ask them to choose sides.
- Again, my mother is not famous
because she's pragmatic or level headed, it's just chaos.
- What is going on with Roseanne and Tom Arnold?
- The Property of Tom Arnold.
- [Narrator] But Roseanne didn't need Arnold to get press.
She could do that all by herself.
- Oh, man, "The Star-Spangled Banner" incident.
- I was there.
So, it was me and my mother and Tom
and Tom Werner of Carsey-Werner,
which created "The Cosby Show" and the "Roseanne" show.
Very wealthy, so he owned the San Diego Padres.
So he said to her,
"Why don't you come down and sing the national anthem?
It'll be great, you're a comedian, it'll be fun."
♪ O say, can you see ♪
- She gets out there and starts singing.
♪ So proudly we hail'd ♪
- And she sucks and blows it.
- Three lines in, the crowd starts booing her,
and that's when she amped it up.
- When she grabbed her crotch at the end...
♪ Brave ♪
(crowd boos)
- (beep) brilliant.
- [Narrator] After the boos settled,
Roseanne was subjected to a nationwide scandal.
- We can call it already, "The Rose-Anthem."
- The raunchy rendition of the American national anthem
is causing a sensation all across the United States.
- It backfired really bad.
- My reaction is it was disgraceful
- You know it's bad when the president of the United States
comes out and says, "Your act sucks."
- You would've thought she assassinated the president,
the way people were reacting.
- [Reporter] Late this afternoon,
Barr called a news conference, she declined to apologize.
- I'll sing that song again if I feel like it
because it's my national anthem.
- She said she was getting death threats.
- She was so depressed after that
and she wasn't the same for a long time.
- [Narrator] Despite the public outcry,
Roseanne's ratings were barely affected.
- Lately, I've had a cable special, an album, a tour
and appearances on dozens of talk shows, you know,
counting public apologies and everything.
- [Narrator] The sitcom still dominated prime time.
It seemed like no amount of negative press
could stop Roseanne, not yet.
(suspenseful music)
Wildly hailed as one of the greatest sitcoms of its era,
America said goodbye to "Roseanne" in 1997.
- It's kind of sad, but kind of happy
to really think back about what we've accomplished
and that I'm happier.
- But don't expect this to be the last of Roseanne.
- [Narrator] It's star floated between gigs.
A talk show, a reality series.
- [Announcer] "Roseanne's Nuts."
- [Narrator] Stand-up specials.
- What a privilege it is for you to have me here tonight,
ladies and gentlemen.
- [Narrator] Even a sing-along children's album.
♪ Going to the doctor makes me sick ♪
- [Narrator] It wasn't until 2012
that Roseanne would make her biggest move in decades.
- Here I go, here I go, running for president.
- There came a year
where she was going to run for president,
which was so like her.
- [Reporter] Roseanne Barr announced her plans
to run for the Green Party nomination on Twitter.
- I started working with Roseanne in late 2011
and immediately I jumped on board.
I said, "This is a great idea for the Green Party.
This is wonderful."
- Her show was gone.
- What's your number one worry?
- My number one worry is that it's over.
- So she had no podium to voice her views
and entertain the public.
- Roseanne, what has a has-been of your magnitude
been up to recently?
- We've seen it time and time again with Roseanne.
She knows how to get people talking,
she knows how to keep people talking.
- I'm the only serious comedian in this race, Fredricka.
- We're talking about her- - We're talking about it.
- And that's probably all she wanted, right?
- I wouldn't say it was a publicity stunt,
but I think she was well aware
that she probably wasn't going to be the president.
- [Narrator] Roseanne's political affiliation
seemed to fit her image as a left-leaning,
progressively-minded person.
- We want marijuana (beep) legal!
- People often see that as a joke,
but in reality, it is a social justice issue.
- Roseanne was a hero.
She was for everybody, and women, and LGBTQ people.
- [Narrator] But Roseanne's presidential run also saw her
dabbling in some far out conspiratorial beliefs.
- In the case of Roseanne, a her mind is like a sponge,
always questioning, always wanting to learn.
You know, she's a conspiracy person,
whether people agree with it or not.
- [Roseanne] I think climate change,
it's a code word like everything political is a code word.
I'm more subscribed to the theory of weather manipulation
for depopulation purposes.
- [Narrator] Roseanne's foray into politics
opened another avenue, a new social media megaphone.
- [Roseanne] I'm getting good at the Tweeting.
- Roseanne 100% uses Twitter to (beep) with people.
- Twitter to my mother is, like, it's addictive.
Like, this is a place where you can espouse
and everybody can read your opinion on anything.
- [Narrator] Roseanne tweeted compulsively
and controversially.
- She gets on Twitter
and does all this crazy political bullshit.
I don't read any of it.
I don't know what she's talking about.
- Then she's tweeting out, you know, QAnon conspiracies.
If you wanna say she was far left or far right,
whatever it was, it was extremes.
- When people talk about her going off the rails politically
in recent years, I don't know what it is about social media,
but people are different online than offline.
- [Narrator] For the famously unfiltered comedian,
Twitter offered a direct connection
with an audience of millions.
- [Man] She's a controversial presence on Twitter,
she always has been.
- You're seeing what seems like more people embracing
or sharing conspiracy theories,
and I think that begins with the natural way people interact
with the media, or with the truth.
- She's watching all these videos on YouTube,
crazy conspiracy things, and buying into it.
Then she'd send them to me and say, "Watch this."
- I don't like them putting chemicals in the water
that turn the frigging frogs gay!
- [Bill] I said, "This is crazy shit,
why are you watching this?"
- (grunts) I'm sick of this crap!
- When you're in the social media
and you tie into a certain cult mentality or belief,
or whatever, the algorithms are frightening.
I think a lot of people are starting to figure that out now
with just what incredible power that is.
- I mean, she wanted to get away from the noise,
so she buys this beautiful farm in Hawaii.
- [Roseanne] Yeah.
- But she's bored, so she goes on YouTube
and starts following these things,
and somehow or other got brought into it.
She's not the only one.
Other people have been brought into it as well.
- It can easily take you into some corner of the internet
that's full of fake stuff, that's misleading,
that's gonna get you to waste your time
and go down a rabbit hole.
And then I saw a guy eating a baby
- [Narrator] Roseanne became an outspoken public proponent
of far right fringe conspiracy theories.
- Roseanne was by far the most famous person
who was advancing these theories by retweeting them.
- [Narrator] She had always liked pushing buttons,
she arguably made a career of it,
but her desire to get a rise out of people
was spiraling out of control
and things were getting much, much worse.
- I'm depressed as hell.
I am whacked, I'm crazy.
You know, I'm crazier than hell.
Everyone knows I'm crazier than hell.
- [Narrator] Roseanne has never been shy
about her personal struggles.
- She has mental illness.
- My friend Roseanne admitted
that she had been admitted to a mental institution.
She has said she has multiple personalities.
- [Narrator] She has said that these issues date back
to the car accident when she was 16.
- I was in the hospital for a while, you know,
and they didn't understand too much about bipolar disorder,
or multiple personality disorder.
- Depending on what part of the brain is injured,
it can impact behavior in very different ways.
- My understanding is, Roseanne has been public
about having some sort of dissociative identity disorder.
- [Interviewer] You have said in the past that you suffer
from multiple personality disorder.
- Well, I don't suffer from it anymore.
- [Interviewer] You don't?
- I enjoy it.
- And such severe trauma
that her personality shattered a bit.
She certainly, you know,
has the unstable relationships and chaotic emotions
that we associate with these kinds of conditions.
- She's made jokes about it.
She's tried to make light of the situation.
- All right, Roseanne, let's work some more
on your multiple personality disorder.
Who would like to talk first?
- While also acknowledging that she does have a problem.
- My name is Alicia and I love to have sex.
- Oh!
- I'm kind of a whore.
- [Narrator] But by her account,
the disorder made Roseanne more outgoing,
more personable and even funnier.
- Hi, I'm Mandy, I'm six years old.
- Hey, hey, hey, what happened to that last woman?
- I was always curious that so many people were thinking
was she created because of this car accident?
Did it stir up a certain part of her brain?
But then I started meeting comics that were going,
"It doesn't matter, she's delivering on the goods."
So it didn't figure into the soup.
- [Interviewer] You ever institutionalized?
- Honey, that's like going to the beach.
- [Interviewer] Seriously, you've been-
- I've been hospitalized a lot.
- Social media, not good for people with mental illnesses.
Look, I have mental illness.
I have depression, I have anxiety, I have ADD.
I will go into the vortex of an Instagram or a Twitter
and then I'll look at the clock and go, "What the (beep)."
It (beep) with your head.
- The amazing thing is that,
as soon as you're not on social media,
or you step away from it, all the chaos disappears.
You can enjoy your life, you can enjoy the weather, the sun,
you can walk your dog.
It doesn't feel like the world
is melting down all around you.
- She was always in trouble with her Twitter.
We took her Twitter, her kids.
We changed her password multiple times.
She'd get it back, she'd finagle it from my sister's
and be like "I need to post a picture of my kid,"
and then she'd get on and start shit,
'cause she was addicted to fighting.
- Can we pop one of her tweets up?
- [Narrator] Roseanne's social media activity
seemed to reflect something of her volatile personality.
- Twitter, social media, let's be honest,
it's probably the worst thing you can give to somebody
that's erratic and mentally ill.
- [Narrator] Around 2016, Roseanne began publicly rooting
for another prodigious Tweeter.
- [Trump] The Washington Post put a picture
of an empty arena-
- When she came out as a Trump supporter,
I think it surprised everybody
who had worked with her before.
- As your friend, Roseanne,
I must remind you of something very important.
You're a socialist!
- [Narrator] Like Roseanne,
Donald Trump styled himself as an outsider
and the comedian lent him her enthusiastic support.
- I feel like she didn't feel appreciated
when she was a leftist, and as a result,
she just said, I'm just gonna go over there.
- If you say that you're a supporter of Donald Trump, or-
- Oh yeah, people are mad about that,
but you know, I don't give a (beep).
- The fact that she was tweeting so much support
of Donald Trump became very controversial for her.
- But you are a very socially liberal person in general.
I mean-
- I'm still the same, you all moved.
- We did?
- You all went so (beep) far out, you lost everybody.
- [Narrator] Roseanne wasn't afraid of talking
about Donald Trump, or of amplifying
- It's just really chilling and wonderful
to think about the things that President Trump has done.
- You know, she tweeted,
"President Trump has freed so many children held in bondage
to pimps all over this world, hundreds each month.
He has broken up trafficking rings
in high places everywhere."
- [Narrator] Roseanne's hyper-partisan political beliefs
began to seem like a liability
when ABC announced they'd be rebooting "Roseanne" in 2018.
- [Trump] Make America great again.
- [Narrator] She was keen to bring President Trump
to the center of the conversation.
- [Reporter] After a two-decade hiatus, "Roseanne" is back,
but now tackling some decidedly modern issues.
- But most of all, Lord,
thank you for making America great again.
- It's like if for the reboot of "Will & Grace",
Will was into women now.
- How could you have voted for him, Roseanne?
- He talked about jobs, Jackie.
He said he'd shake things up.
- Her being a Trumpster got all the Trump supporters
to watch the reboot because what is there on television
with a star who is an open Trump supporter?
They're, like, isn't, so she was it,
and she's a pretty big catch.
- [Narrator] The rebooted "Roseanne"
and critics alike.
- In the reboot, you have a family
where there is homosexuality in the family,
where there's an interracial relationship,
where you have Hillary and Trump represented in there,
yet they can all still sit down and get along.
- You did really hit upon something great
in that you've got this dynamic
that real people are really experiencing.
- More people actually watched the show's premier
Tuesday night than the 1997 finale.
- [Reporter] Highest rated comedy in nearly four years.
Number one trend on Twitter.
- [Woman] At its peak,
the premier garnering 15 tweets per second.
- Even look at Roseanne,
I called her yesterday, look at her ratings.
- Trump called her that night to congratulate her,
and the night Trump called her, I called my mom and I said,
"You're (beep), they're coming for you."
- [Roseanne] I've known him for many years
and it was very sweet of him to congratulate us.
- [Narrator] With the explicit approval of the president,
Roseanne ramped up her erratic social media posting.
- She got really into arguing.
My mom was like, "I'm gonna fight with everybody,"
and it became a problem.
- I said to her, "Rosie, you gotta stop tweeting this shit.
You sound like a crazy person."
She goes, "I'm just having fun with it."
- [Narrator] ABC's executives were also worried.
- ABC was concerned about her tweets
because she was one of those Twitter trolls,
and so ABC had asked her to cool it.
- I hear you're getting ready to stick it
to the execs at ABC again.
It's like 1993 all over.
- Roseanne needs a publicist on Twitter.
She needs someone to literally look at her tweets
before they press the send button and edit them.
- I tell everyone, "Stop using that darn internet."
You know, it's no good for anyone,
especially at two o'clock in the morning,
especially when you think you're being funny.
- [Narrator] Early one morning in late May of 2018,
Roseanne crossed another line.
- So then she tweets, and I quote,
"Muslim Brotherhood and 'Planet of the Apes' had a baby,
equals VJ," and VJ is for Valerie Jarrett.
- [Narrator] More than just another inflammatory tweet,
this one would change Roseanne's career forever.
(suspenseful music)
- I'm trying to talk about Iran.
I'm trying to talk about,
Valerie Jarrett wrote the Iran deal!
- I know, but you've told me this 300 times.
I woke up that morning and a friend of mine said,
"Your mom is trending on Twitter."
And I said, "Oh, what did she do now?"
- Boy, did we have a lot of news overnight.
- [Man] And Roseanne is leading that news.
She had that racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett.
- What I think we're dealing with
is those that are still trying to turn us back
into a day that that is considered normal.
- You can't call Black people monkeys.
That's what she was doing.
- This story took over the headlines around the world.
When you have the star of this sitcom come out
and say something so racist and so damaging,
there is no recovery.
- You know, everybody knows that I have struggled
with mental health issues
and I was struggling at that time as well.
- That was just always kind of her go-to.
If we would have a disagreement or a fight,
she could always point to the fact that I was
picking on somebody that was not all there,
so that was just kind of her trump card.
- [Narrator] Responses to the tweet came fast and furious.
- Plain and simple, the Roseanne tweet was racist.
It was very, very specific and very, very pointed.
- She was white peopling, you know?
White people, y'all have racial slip-ups from time to time.
Sometimes y'all get real comfortable
and forget about history.
- [Reporter] It was only after some immediate backlash
that Barr then tweeted this.
"I apologize to Valerie Jarrett and to all Americans.
I'm truly sorry for making a bad joke about her politics
and her looks."
- Every comic has to look in the mirror
at the end of the day and say,
"Did I do what was right for me and for the world?"
And you have to take your own inventory.
- I went, "Oh my God, they're gonna get her with this one
and I don't like it."
And then I started seeing it on the news
and I was like, "Ah!"
I called her, I was like, "Rosie."
"I (beep) up, I know."
- Are you filming?
- [Narrator] Roseanne and her son Jake
hastily produced a video attempting
to explain away her tweet.
- I thought the bitch was white!
God damn it!
Did you get it?
- [Jake] Oh, yeah.
- Let me see it.
- If her attempt was truly to be funny, she messed up.
Like Carlin said, "You don't know where the line is
until you cross it."
And everybody let her know, especially ABC,
that she crossed it.
- It is one of the most shocking developments in TV history.
- [Kevin] Roseanne's show is now canceled
and old episodes are pulled from the air.
- I figured ABC would never walk away
from tens of millions of dollars from "Roseanne,"
but that's exactly what the network did.
- Bob Iger, who's a CEO of Disney called me
before the announcement.
He apologized, he said that he had zero tolerance
for that sort of racist bigoted comment.
- [Narrator] And this wasn't the first time
Roseanne had sunk to using this kind of racist,
Islamophobic, transphobic language on Twitter.
- I think there was a lot of concerns
around a lot of her tweets for a long time.
- If I was ABC,
I don't know that I would've rebooted the show
seeing that Twitter account.
They had to see that this was gonna be problematic.
- [Narrator] Obviously, network execs
were now doing the math
and Roseanne's Twitter account was no longer
an acceptable risk to their bottom line.
- How hard was it to fire Roseanne?
(audience laughs)
- Easy.
- [Narrator] And in arguably the greatest surprise of all,
Roseanne vowed that she was leaving Twitter.
- [Interviewer] Are you off now, Twitter, forever?
- Well, my kids took it away from me forever.
- So, we haven't seen any new tweets
over the past few hours, but stay tuned.
- You know, I made a mistake, obviously.
It cost me everything and I've paid the price for it.
- [Narrator] But Roseanne's Twitter sabbatical
didn't last long.
- [Reporter] Overnight, Roseanne Barr tapping out
another controversial tweet storm
just hours after vowing she was leaving Twitter.
- [Reporter] Later adding,
"You guys make me feel like fighting back."
- [Narrator] With her career in free fall,
Roseanne's team scrambled to spin things.
- I call my mom's publicist and I was like,
"Look, what are you gonna say?"
And he's like, "Oh, we're gonna go with Ambien."
- [Reporter] This morning, disgraced comedian Roseanne Barr
offering a new apology.
- She's blaming sleeping pills for this.
- [Narrator] Roseanne shifted the blame.
- She also continues to blame Ambien.
She also continues to suggest that she didn't know
Valerie Jarrett was Black.
- She had no idea.
- Well, Roseanne blaming the tweet on Ambien
certainly doesn't help
because now you're looking for a way out.
- [Narrator] Sanofi, the pharmaceutical giant
that makes Ambien, responded with their own tweet.
- [Reporter] Saying, racism is not a known side effect
of any of their medications.
- For someone who's so brave and so bold in her comedy
to not open your consciousness up.
You know what? It was a coward move.
- [Narrator] Coming midway through the Trump era,
the controversy around Roseanne and her tweet
were framed as a part of a broader culture war.
- And look what happened to Roseanne.
Did they fire Roseanne? Yes.
- Roseanne did not stop being famous after this happened.
There are people who are more fans of Roseanne
than they used to be,
who consider her more of a free-speech martyr
than they ever would have, had this never happened.
- [Narrator] While many people were appalled
by Roseanne's tweet, others on the far right fringes
responded to it and its pointed language.
- When I saw Muslim Brotherhood in that tweet,
it was definitely Islamophobic.
- There's plenty of people up in arms
about the "Planet of the Apes" part
and they should be because it's sickening,
but the Muslim Brotherhood part, it's like,
oh, yeah, no, that's fine.
And plenty of her other tweets were so Islamophobic.
- You know, what was so interesting in the backlash
and the later on, after that,
was the support that suddenly came for her
from the maggot crowd.
- I was surprised at how many people
were coming to her defense and saying,
"We stand with you, we support you.
Oh, you were just joking."
That was not a joke.
- She just went from having a fan base
that was gay and liberal to Trumpers.
- Like it or not,
you're now the face of the Trump supporter.
- I guess, thank you so much for walking with me
when I was like in a real down place, thank you.
- You can be a Trump supporter and not be a racist.
However, when you make certain statements,
I won't call you a racist,
but I will call you on your racist behavior and say,
if it walks like a duck and if it quacks like a duck...
That person happens to be black,
this word is associated with you,
I use it because I'm angry right now.
If I can get you angry, then I've got that power back.
It is about psychological and emotional control.
- The comedian in you wants to go,
Roseanne tried to be funny with the tweet,
but you know, that felt personal, that felt vicious.
Like, that didn't even feel like an attempt to be funny.
- There's this sort of cliche that you can't joke
about anything anymore or comedians get in trouble.
And then the example that is often provided
is somebody's tweet, but a tweet is not stand-up,
'cause even if it's a stand-up comic
who's doing the tweeting,
when they're tweeting, they're not doing stand-up.
It's two different things.
- [Narrator] Roseanne had always blurred the line
between her comedy career and her highly politicized,
increasingly problematic public persona.
Now she had blurred another line
between provocation and plain racism.
This time she had gone too far.
(eerie music)
In the wake of Roseanne's exile from mainstream public life,
ABC rebooted "Roseanne" again.
- ABC has announced plans for a new spinoff
featuring the cast without its star.
- [Narrator] The show returned as "The Connors"
with the main character having been killed off.
- Roseanne OD'd on opioids.
- That's not possible.
- It's like the worst thing they could have
possibly done to me, was to fire me from my own show.
- [Narrator] The star had always survived
the worst public outcries.
If anything, such controversies
boosted her ratings and celebrity, but
- Here's this icon, Roseanne,
who is talking about conspiracy theories.
Now you're doing damage.
- Biden, he is in bed with Russia.
The vote was fraudulent. Hello!
- [Narrator] For years,
Roseanne's contrarian attitude paid off.
Her success stemmed from her ability
to challenge the status quo
and dig her heels in when she faced blow back.
- I think that her success was, in a large part,
due to not editing what she says
and saying what she wanted to say when she wanted to say it.
- Like a lot of people, okay,
they come up to you, they go, "You're not very feminine.
You're not very feminine."
So I say, "Well, suck my (beep).
- And I think that they loved her for it until they didn't.
- [Narrator] She had always been unapologetic,
which worked for her when she had nothing to apologize for.
But now her words were risking real harm.
- Look, there's 11% of people in America
that don't think we've walked on the moon.
There's roughly that much that thinks the earth is flat.
You take a couple of fanny shakes and a left turn
and you're saying things about people who are other races
or faiths that are generalizations and untrue,
it's disinformation and people suck at the tit of it
until they're drunk, and drunk people hurt people.
- Should some people be canceled?
I mean, probably.
I mean, if you're gonna put real danger out there
for folks, yeah.
- [Narrator] In the years since she was written off
her own sitcom,
Roseanne has only moved further to the fringes.
- Like a lot of people who began dabbling
in some of these conspiracy theories,
I think Roseanne herself has spent more time exploring them.
I don't see any evidence of her getting convinced
that one of the ideas she was pushing was wrong and debunked
and she should turn the other way from it.
- [Narrator] From the id of the Midwestern housewife,
to America's tough love TV mom, to total pariah,
Roseanne has always served as a barometer
for life in America,
and, in a way, that may still be true.
- Roseanne is no longer on mainstream TV.
There's no longer this celebrity on that show
with these opinions,
but she's still around and she's going on alternative media
to say these sorts of things.
- So I wanna relate it to the whole Q movement
that's big in the US,
and I guess all over the world.
- And more celebrities, more people generally,
have embraced these sorts of ideas.
- Somebody said, "You should do a new Roseanne show
and say all your family was killed by illegal aliens."
- What Roseanne always did was took a snapshot of real life
and showed it to you.
- Roseanne became famous because she said things
like she saw them,
and she came to kind of embody what's going on
with middle America, with the conspiracy theories,
with QAnon with all of these things,
and we're getting lost in this one tweet,
but she's really reflecting a lot
of what's going on with America.
That's what brought her up and that's what took her down.