Roseanne Barr claims she was asked to appear on The Conners after her character was killed off the franchise — but ultimately turned down the offer.
“They called me and asked me if I would like to come back as a guest star,” Barr, 72, alleged in her new documentary, Roseanne Barr Is America, per People. “You’re coming back as a ghost.”
Barr said she was in disbelief that ABC would ask her to return to the franchise after she was fired years earlier. “You’re asking me to come back to the show that you f***ing stole from me and killed my ass, and now you want me to show up because you got shit f***ing ratings and play a ghost?” she recalled thinking, claiming her response was, “I’m gonna be bowling that f***ing week.”
Barr starred on Roseanne, which she cocreated, from 1988 to 1997. The ABC sitcom followed the titular character and her working class family in the fictional town of Lanford, Illinois. John Goodman, Laurie Metcalf and Sara Gilbert also starred.
The cast returned for a 10th season in 2018, decades after the series finale first aired, but it was ultimately canceled later that year in the wake of Barr’s controversial social media posts.
“Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant, and inconsistent with our values,” ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey said in a statement after Barr issued an apology. ABC subsequently removed all references to the revival series on its press site and Viacom pulled all reruns of the sitcom’s entire run from all of its channels.
Roseanne was then revived as The Conners, which ran for seven seasons from 2018 to 2025. Goodman, Metcalf and Gilbert all reprised their respective roles, and Barr’s character was killed offscreen after an accidental opioid overdose. In her absence, the show revealed that Roseanne had been struggling with addiction which was exacerbated by knee pain and lack of insurance coverage.
“I just can’t bear it, so I don’t [watch],” Barr told the Los Angeles Times in February 2023 of the spinoff. “When they killed my character off, that was a message to me, knowing that I’m mentally ill or have mental health issues, that they did want me to commit suicide.”
She continued, “They killed my character. … And all of that was to say thank you for bringing 28 million viewers, which they never had before and will never see again. Because they can kiss my ass.”
Despite her anger toward the network, Barr voiced her support for Goodman, who portrayed her husband, Dan, and Metcalf, who played sister Laurie.
“I just wish ABC had not thrown two of the greatest actors in the world out with me — Laurie and John,” she wrote via X in 2018. “I’m so sick over this — they will never have better character actors on their network.”
Us Weekly has reached out to ABC for comment.
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