Roseanne Barr says she was LIVID when The Conners offered her a bizarre role to help boost ratings
's new documentary Roseanne Is America debuted on Tuesday, where she revealed how ABC asked her back on The Conners after she was killed off.
ABC revived the 72-year-old comedienne's iconic 1980s/1990s sitcom Roseanne back in 2018, bringing back the original cast of characters in the fictional Lanford, IL.
The original show ran nine seasons from 1988 to 1997, and is widely considered one of the greatest sitcoms of all time.
ABC brought the show back for a 10th season in 2018, and while it was renewed for an 11th, the network quickly reversed their decision after Barr tweeted that former Barack Obama administration official Valerie Jarrett was an 'ape.'
After ABC called the tweet, 'abhorrent, repugnant, and inconsistent with our values,' they ultimately cancelled Roseanne and brought forth a new show, The Conners, which revealed in the series premiere that Roseanne's character had died from a drug overdose.
Now Barr is revealing in her Roseanne Is America documentary - available on DVD and digital formats - that ABC actually wanted to bring her back as a 'ghost' guest star at some point during The Conners' run.
'They called me and asked me if I would like to come back as a guest star. You're coming back as a ghost,' Barr revealed.
The comedienne added, 'You're asking me to come back to the show that you f***ing stole from me and killed my a**, and now you want me to show up because you got s**t f***ing ratings and play a ghost?'
She added in the film that she turned down the request by telling the network, 'I'm gonna be bowling that f***ing week.'
Barr also commented on how her character was killed off in the show mirrors the real-life death of Glenn Quinn, who played Becky's (Alicia Goranson) husband Mark Healy on the original show, and died from an accidental overdose in 2002.
'Within three weeks, they revived the show as The Conners, and of course they killed off my character Roseanne in an opioid overdose,' Barr said in the documentary.
'Which was staggering because Glenn Quinn, who played Becky's husband, actually died of an opioid overdose,' she added.
The show would go on to reveal that her overdose came as she was struggling with addiction that was exacerbated by knee pain and insufficient medical coverage.
The Conners ran for seven seasons on ABC, coming to a close in late April with the finale, which surprised many fans since it didn't include any footage of Roseanne at all, despite multiple clips from the original show with other characters.
Executive producer Dave Caplan explained to Deadline, 'It was contractual,' regarding Roseanne's absence in the finale.
Another executive producer, Bruce Helford, added, 'She was very gracious in allowing us to continue the show because she had a say in that.'
He added of her exit from the show, 'When she realized it would be putting 300 people out of work when the initial reboot was canceled, she gracefully allowed us to continue without her.'
'It really was about these people. This show was really about the lives of these other people in the family, the Conners, and we wanted to focus on them,' he added.
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