Roseanne Barr admitted she “horribly” regretted the racist tweet that resulted in her getting fired from her sitcom reboot. Barr’s remorseful remarks come in a newly released interview recorded shortly after ABC cancelled Roseanne in late May.
“I lost everything, and I regretted it before I lost everything,” Barr told Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on a podcast that was released Saturday night. Boteach also shared an edited transcript from their conversation, Variety reports.
“And I said to God, ‘I am willing to accept whatever consequences this brings because I know I’ve done wrong. I’m going to accept what the consequences are,’ and I do, and I have. But they don’t ever stop. They don’t accept my apology, or explanation. And I’ve made myself a hate magnet.
In the since-deleted tweet, Barr compared former Barack Obama aide Valerie Jarrett, who is African-American, to an ape: “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.” After Barr’s own cast members condemned her tweet, ABC swiftly canceled the rebooted series despite its huge ratings.
“I’m a lot of things, a loudmouth and all that stuff. But I’m not stupid for God’s sake. I never would have wittingly called any black person, [I would never had said] they are a monkey,” Barr told Boteach. “I just wouldn’t do that. I didn’t do that. And people think that I did that and it just kills me.”
Barr would later state that she penned the tweet “on Ambien” and that she didn’t realize that Jarrett was African-American. However, in the conversation with Boteach, Barr takes the blames for her actions.
“I should have been better, and I wasn’t. And I caused a lot of pain. I know that, and that’s the worse feeling in the world. I caused pain for my family, I caused pain for my mother, I caused pain to the two hundred out-of-work actors that I loved. And the crew and writers. I feel so bad that they gave me another chance and I blew it. But I did it,” Barr said.
“And what can I do now except say of course, I’m not a racist, I’m an idiot. And I might have done something that comes across as bigoted and ignorant, and I know that’s how it came across. And you know, I asked for forgiveness ’cause I do love all people, I really do.”
In the weeks since Barr’s interview, ABC has reached a deal with Roseanne‘s cast and crew to do a spinoff series, sans Barr, called The Connors.
Hear Boteach’s conversation with Barr below:
