Almost two months after posting a racist tweet in which she compared former Obama White House adviser Valerie Jarrett to a Planet of the Apes character, disgraced comedian Roseanne Barr appeared to double down on her insulting attack on Thursday (July 19) in a bizarre YouTube video.
Smoking a cigarette and looking disheveled while seated on what looks like a soundstage, Barr nervously fusses with her microphone and hair as a voice off camera asks her a series of questions in the video titled “Roseanne explains the Valerie Jarrett tweet.” It remained unclear at press time if the video was meant to be a comedic bit or a serious attempt at clarifying the remark that swiftly resulted in Barr’s rebooted Roseanne sitcom getting canceled and the actress being blackballed from the spin-off created in the wake of the controversy.
“Are you filming?” a frustrated Barr asks a producer, who suggests the actress imagine she’s giving a presidential address. “Like you’re busted killing a hooker… whatever,” the producer says as Barr yells “what?” in exasperation. As the producer spins a ever more Byzantine scenario involving “jump cuts, multiple outfits” and other scenes from a presidential pardon video Barr loses her cool and shouts, “I’m trying to talk about Iran! I’m trying to talk about Valerie Jarrett wrote the Iran deal!”
Matching her impatience, the producer says, “I know, but you’ve told me this 300 times,” prompting Barr to say, “that’s what my tweet was about,” before she looks directly into the camera and bellows “I thought the bitch was white! Goddamit! I thought the bitch was white! Fuck!” The outbursts elicits giggles from the producer and the clip ends with Barr, seemingly calmed down, taking a drag off her cigarette.
Based on the description of the video — which reads “Roseanne, like always, cuts through the bullshit and gets the heart of the matter” — it was not immediately clear if it was mean to deflate the situation or was just the latest provocation from the Trump-supporting comedian whose Twitter feed has been filled with a barrage of conspiracy theories about democrats in the weeks since the uproar, as well as re-tweets from alt-right figures who lashed out at Barr’s detractors.
After ABC’s cancelation of Roseanne in the wake of a huge firestorm over the Jarrett tweet, the network picked up a spinoff called The Conners, which is expected to bow in the fall with no input from the former star of the series. Barr issued an apology to Jarrett the day of the original tweet and said she deeply regretted the statement — later blaming the sleep aid Ambien for her actions — but the damage was done at that point.
On July 11 she tweeted, “I’d like to speak directly to you, the people, and cut out any middlemen who use for clickbait/ad revenue while seeking to divide rather than unite. Please email any questions you have for me at askroseannebarr@gmail.com and I will post answers to my YouTube channel next week.” The tweet came after Barr announced that she’d decided against doing any TV interviews and would instead post the “entire explanation of what happened & why,” seemingly referring to Thursday’s video.
In her only interview since the incident, Barr told Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on his podcast that she’s already “been offered so many things and I almost already accepted one really good offer to go back on TV and I might do it.”