Sara Gilbert, the actress who audiences first came to love as Darlene Conner on Roseanne and the driving force behind the show’s 2018 reboot has spoken on-air about the show’s cancellation for the first time.
The 43-year-old actress, who also co-hosts the panel current affairs show The Talk, appeared to be holding back tears on Monday as she faced the camera and spoke about how proud she still is of the show she helped bring back to life, while also backing the decision that was made to see it come to an abrupt end.
The Roseanne reboot was swiftly cancelled after its star and namesake, actress and comedian Roseanne Barr, tweeted a racist and offensive comment about former President Obama’s aide Valerie Jarrett.
Barr deleted the tweet not long after posting it to the social media platform and quickly followed it up with an apology, but the damage was already very much done.
Her behaviour ended the show, despite the fact that it was already renewed for a second rebooted season, and left both Barr and Gilbert without their lucrative sitcom jobs, along with fellow Roseanne cast-mates John Goodman (who played Dan Conner), Laurie Metcalf (who played Jackie Harris), Michael Fishman (who played D.J. Conner), Alicia Goranson (who played Becky Conner) and Johnny Galecki (who had just reprised his role as David Healy).
“In addition to my statement, I would like to say this has been a very difficult week,” Gilbert said on The Talk while sitting beside her fellow panelists. ” A lot of people have been hurt by this.
“I will say I’m proud of the show we made. This show has always been about diversity, love and inclusion,” she continued as her voice began to waver. “And it’s sad to see it end in this way. I’m sad for the people who lost their jobs in the process.
“However, I do stand behind the decision ABC made.”
Sara Gilbert has spoken about the brutal ending of her TV show Roseanne.
Her on-air comments back up the statement she made on Twitter shorty after news broke about the show’s cancellation, where she quickly distanced herself from her longtime co-star Roseanne Barr, who replied to her comment with a brief “wow! Unreal.”
The episodes of The Talk that aired last week while the news around Roseanne was breaking were pre-taped, so this was the first opportunity Gilbert has had to discuss the topic on air on her own show.
Her The Talk co-host, Sheryl Underwood added in “As a black woman who is a comedian, I’m very, very proud of Channing Dungey, the president of ABC Entertainment. And as Spike Lee said, a lot of people came together to do the right thing and I’m happy to see it was done so swiftly.”
The finality of Gilbert’s statement about Roseanne also appears to have put a nail in the coffin of the show’s potential to be carried on via a spin-off series.
Although unconfirmed, there has been talk around a possible spin-off series of the show that would star her, and some of her now unemployed cast-mates.
According
to TMZ, Gilbert has reportedly been “calling cast members to gauge their interest in the event ABC gives the reboot the green light. We’re told John Goodman is very interested.”
And although fans have voiced their support for a reboot on Twitter, judging form the sadness and finality in Gilbert’s first on-air statement it does not look like the wheels of that plan are even vaguely in motion, and that she would like fans to remember the show as it was, and not by its controversial demise.
Would you like to watch a spin-off series of Roseanne?
Top Comments
(Snort) ABC thinks they'll lose less money by throwing Roseanne under the bus, PERIOD! Everybody knows being controversial and outrageous is her shtick, does anyone remember her singing the national anthem? Now all the SJW's act all shocked! Gimme a break, Jerry Seinfield won't do college gigs anymore because of humorless twerps looking left, right and center for something to be offended about. If George Carlin was starting out now his career'd probably be buried before it started by self appointed wannabe apparatchicks screeching "NOT FUNNY! RACIST! SEXIST! EVERY IST! Bullshit!
Why would Jerry Seinfeld do college gigs, period? He's obscenely wealthy - what would be the point of him going to do stand up in front of a bunch of drunken teens-early twenty-somethings who probably don't know him from anything other than Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee?
Why would Jerry Seinfeld do anything, period?
(Sigh) I don't know, he likes doing stand up? I know he's said he won't do colleges because of the certain type of person looking for something to be triggered by, he doesn't want to deal with all the shallow outrage.
I think it was a noble idea and I think it could have really helped bridge a gap that is widening between two sides. But people like Roseanne just cannot play nice. They cannot argue or debate anything properly, they cannot express their disagreement with someone without being personally offensive and insulting someone because of their appearance. And when you have Trump doing it, others will follow suite. She has always been reactionary and nasty and it's not surprise that it didn't end well. But I do feel bad for Sarah. I really think she had noble intentions.
I'm a little more cynical. Roseanne's behaviour and opinions were well known before the spin off. Those who knew her, willingly worked with her - but now they're all rushing to distance themselves when they were only too willing to align when there was money and ratings to be had. The thing we also need to remember is that Roseanne owns the characters they play, so any reboot was always going to result in massive coin into her pocket - as will any spin off, should they agree to pursue that line.
Agreed, she's just joining the mob to kick Roseanne when she's down.
Sarah Gilbert is just a stock-actress, nothing more; and any notoriety she has, came from playing the character that Roseanne created. So she's obviously just "denying Roseanne three times before morning."
Was that a Christian reference ?! Unreal
Which is why I said that I thought that Sarah's intentions were noble. Yes, Roseanne has always been a loose cannon, but I really think that America is becoming very very divided between left and right, dangerously so, and it would have been nice if Roseanne could have realised that and not acted like a complete and utter racist.