Comedian Roseanne Barr recently claimed that her career-ending tweet from 2018 likening former Obama presidential advisor Valerie Jarrett to an ape was an idea that came to her from God.
“The way I feel about it is that God told me to do what I did, and it was a nuclear bomb,” Barr said during an interview with Variety published last week.
“The day of my tweet, over 2 million Americans Googled Valerie Jarrett and the Iran deal. And that was my intent. So, whatever.”
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Subscribe to get daily/weekly email with the top stories (plus special offers!) from The Christian Post. Be the first to know.
Barr, who is Jewish, told the outlet that she awoke after taking sleeping pills and alcohol when she became enraged with ABC executives for taking control of the reboot of her hit 1990s sitcom “Roseanne.” The network fired her over the tweet, killing off her character with an opioid overdose and redubbing the show “The Connors.”
“I was already having nightmares about never going back to that show, and God woke me up,” Barr said. “I had my laptop there in bed, as always, and I opened it, and there was [an X post with] a picture of Valerie Jarrett next to Helena Bonham Carter in full makeup as Ari in ‘Planet of the Apes,’ and they looked like Xerox copies of each other, so I captioned it.”
“This was in the middle of my three-month conversations with journalists in Iran who were telling me about the loss of women’s rights there due to the Iran deal. And I was irate,” Barr added, referencing the Iranian-born Jarrett’s role in the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal, of which President Donald Trump has been heavily critical.
Barr quote-tweeted the meme that night, writing, “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.” She was inundated with accusations of racism but has denied allegations that she was likening black people to monkeys with her tweet.
Barr apologized at the time and said she was unaware Jarrett was black; she maintained to Variety that she was trying to make a political point. She also pushed back against Disney CEO Bob Iger, who reportedly approved of her firing.
“They were so racist that they thought my tweet said black people look like monkeys when it was about ‘Planet of the Apes,’ which is a movie about fascism,” Barr said of her critics. “[Planet of the Apes writer] Rod Serling himself said it’s about the Jews in Germany. It is not a movie about black people, Bob [Iger].”
Barr, a vocal Trump supporter, also suggested that network executives at ABC were displeased with her because of her political views and especially because of her resistance to the corporation’s idea of introducing a boy character who dresses like a girl.
“[Actress and producer] Sara Gilbert comes in and said, ‘Well, I think the thing now is that people are more interested in their kids being gender fluid, and I think it’s Darlene that would come home with her gender fluid son who wears dresses. And I was like, ‘Oh [expletive],'” she said.
Barr has maintained in the past that she apologized to Jarrett for her tweet, which she admitted at the time was in bad taste. She suggested to Variety that she regrets apologizing.
“I made the mistake of apologizing, and it only got worse after that,” she said. “Never apologize to the Left because they rub that jackboot right in your face in the mud if you apologize.”
Barr has also been outspoken about her relationship with God, telling Tucker Carlson last year that she has been talking to him since she was a young child.
“Since I was 3 years old […], I’ve had a conversation going with God,” said Barr, who grew up in a Jewish home in Utah. “I wrote it in my book. You know how little kids have an imaginary friend? Well, mine was God.”
Barr claimed she once confronted God with the problem of suffering, but said He responded by giving her the sense that it was her responsibility to help others.
Jon Brown is a reporter for The Christian Post. Send news tips to jon.brown@christianpost.com
