Go behind the scenes of ABC's battle over Roseanne Barr's problematic tweets

The Washington Post

The Washington Post's Geoff Edgers interviewed the major parties involved over the Twitter obsession that got Barr fired from Roseanne last May -- going so far as to accompany Barr on a trip to Israel. ABC was always concerned about her tweets, says Edgers. But Barr's tweet shortly after Christmas 2017 -- three months before the Roseanne revival's premiere -- was especially alarming. “i won’t be censored or silence chided or corrected and continue to work. I retire right now. I’ve had enough. bye!" Barr tweeted. "Thus," says Edgers, "began an unusual, behind-the-scenes battle, as ABC and Barr’s producers tried to protect their TV property, and Barr continued to speak out on Twitter, her preferred medium for pushing tales of Pizzagate and George Soros as well as profane blasts at TV personalities such as Stephen Colbert and Rachel Maddow. The network didn’t propose a no-tweet clause in Barr’s contact. Instead, as revealed by interviews with people close to the show and messages shown to The Washington Post, they spent months nudging her to stop while also trying to keep from offending her." As James Moore, Barr’s longtime publicist, says: “It was always this back and forth of ABC not wanting to appear they were censoring Roseanne but also not quite pulling out the big guns. Going, ‘You’re one tweet away from us canceling the show.’ Something that would jar Roseanne.” At one point, Barr's youngest son changed her Twitter password so she would stop tweeting. Meanwhile, executive producer Whitney Cummings now admits she didn't know what she was in for. "I had not gone through the years of past tweets, and that was my mistake," says Cummings. Edgers also goes behind the scenes of the Valerie Jarrett tweet that would ultimately get Barr fired. Edgers also reports that the deal Barr signed allowing The Conners to proceed without her "now infuriates Barr" because she had hoped to one day return to the show.

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