Roseanne Barr returns to standup, slamming ABC and joking about suicide
Roseanne Barr is back — with plenty of curses and no apologies. The controversial comedian made a foul-mouthed return to standup at the Laugh Factory in Las Vegas, about 10 months after ABC canceled the revival of her hit show over a racist tweet.
In her set, Barr joked about feeling suicidal after ABC pulled the plug on her sitcom — and she had a few choice words for the network.
"When you get fired, you get real suicidal," Barr told the Laugh Factory crowd. "But I'd never kill myself because that would make too many f***ing people happy, and I'm not about making people happy."
Barr also read from a letter she wrote to ABC, which she called a "s**** f***ing low-rated network."
"At the first sign of controversy, you killed me off with a drug overdose," she said, referring to ABC's abruptly scripted demise of her character after canceling "Roseanne."
"But you know what? I ain't dead, bitches."
Fellow comic Andrew Dice Clay, who is no stranger to outrage himself, introduced Barr as "a little special treat for everybody." He said there hadn't been many other comedians "as controversial, as outspoken, and as f***ing funny," and the crowd gave Barr a standing ovation. Clay and Barr danced onstage after her set as the audience clapped along.
Clay said in an Instagram post Tuesday said he and Barr were planning to do shows together. In another Instagram post, which showed him and Barr at the Laugh Factory, he said the two of them are "The Comedians Of This Crumbling World , But We are Human and Sometimes Screw Up , or Things Taken The Wrong way. ... Our Job Tho , is To Keep you Laughing."
The revival of "Roseanne" was the highest-rated series of 2018, drawing a weekly average of 20 million viewers, according to Nielsen. ABC canceled the show in May after Barr posted a tweet comparing Valerie Jarrett, a former Obama advisor who is African-American, to a cross between "muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes." The comedian apologized for the tweet and called it "a bad joke" about Jarrett's "politics and her looks."
ABC reworked the show into "The Conners," a spin-off series about the relatives of Roseanne's character carrying on after she dies of an opioid overdose.
