Roseanne Barr
Roseanne Cherrie Barr, also known mononymously as Roseanne, is an American actress, comedian, writer, and producer. She began her career in stand-up comedy, going on to achieve widespread recognition for her work as the eponymous lead character on the ABC sitcom Roseanne, for which she received an Emmy and a Golden Globe.
Having been revived in 2018 to strong ratings, plans for further seasons of Roseanne were dropped after Barr made a tweet condemned as racist by many commentators, with Barr later referring to the tweet as a "bad joke." Her comeback comedy special, Cancel This!, was released on Fox Nation in 2023.
Early life
Barr was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, to a Jewish family. She is the oldest of four children born to Helen, a bookkeeper and cashier, and Jerome Hershel "Jerry" Barr, a salesman. Her father's family were Jewish emigrants from the Russian Empire, and her maternal grandparents were Jewish emigrants from Austria-Hungary and Lithuania. Her paternal grandfather changed his surname from "Borisofsky" to "Barr" upon entering the United States. Barr's great-grandparents were murdered during the Holocaust.Her Jewish upbringing was influenced by her devoutly Orthodox Jewish maternal grandmother. Barr's parents kept their Jewish heritage secret from their neighbors and were partially involved in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Barr has stated, "Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning I was a Jew; Sunday afternoon, Tuesday afternoon, and Wednesday afternoon we were Mormons."
When Barr was three, she was afflicted with Bell's palsy on the left side of her face. She said, " my mother called in a rabbi to pray for me, but nothing happened. Then my mother got a Mormon preacher, he prayed, and I was miraculously cured". Years later, she learned that Bell's palsy was usually temporary and that the Mormon elder came "exactly at the right time".
Barr has stated that she is on the autism spectrum. At six years old, she discovered her first public stage by lecturing at LDS churches around Utah and was elected president of a Mormon youth group.
She attended East High School. At age 16, Barr was hit by a car, and the car's hood ornament impaled her skull; the incident left her with a traumatic brain injury. Her behavior changed so radically that she was institutionalized for eight months at Utah State Hospital.
In 1970, when Barr was 18, she moved out by informing her parents that she was going to visit a friend in Colorado for two weeks, and never returned.
The following year, Barr had a baby, whom she put up for adoption. She and her daughter amicably reunited 17 years later.
Career
Stand-up comedian: 1980–1986
While in Colorado, Barr began doing stand-up gigs in clubs in Denver and other Colorado towns. She later tried out at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles, and went on to appear on The Tonight Show in 1985.In 1986, she performed on a Rodney Dangerfield special and on Late Night with David Letterman, and the following year had her own HBO special called The Roseanne Barr Show, which earned her an American Comedy Award for the funniest female performer in a television special.
Barr was offered the role of Peg Bundy in Married... with Children, but turned it down. In her routine she popularized the phrase "domestic goddess" to refer to a homemaker or housewife. The success of her act led to her own series on ABC, called Roseanne.
''Roseanne'' sitcom, film, books, and talk show: 1987–2004
In 1987, The Cosby Show executive producers Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner wanted to bring a "no-perks family comedy" to television. They hired Cosby writer Matt Williams to write a script about factory workers and signed Barr to play Roseanne Conner.The show premiered on October 18, 1988, and was watched by 21.4 million households, making it the highest-rated debut of that season.
Barr became outraged when she watched the first episode of Roseanne and noticed that in the credits, Williams was listed as creator. She told Tanner Stransky of Entertainment Weekly, "We built the show around my actual life and my kids. The 'domestic goddess', the whole thing." In the same interview, Werner said, "I don't think Roseanne, to this day, understands that this is something legislated by the Writers Guild, and it's part of what every show has to deal with. They're the final arbiters."
During the first season, Barr sought more creative control over the show, opposing Williams' authority. Barr refused to say certain lines and eventually walked off set. She threatened to quit the show if Williams did not leave. ABC let Williams go after the thirteenth episode. Barr gave Amy Sherman-Palladino and Joss Whedon their first writing jobs on Roseanne.
Roseanne ran for nine seasons from 1988 to 1997. Barr won an Emmy, a Golden Globe, a Kids' Choice Award, and three American Comedy Awards for her part in the show. Barr had crafted a "fierce working-class domestic goddess" persona in the eight years preceding her sitcom and wanted to do a realistic show about a strong mother "who was not a victim of patriarchal consumerism."
For the final two seasons, Barr earned $40 million, making her the second-highest-paid woman in show business at the time, after Oprah Winfrey.
On July 25, 1990, Barr performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" off-key before a baseball game between the San Diego Padres and Cincinnati Reds at Jack Murphy Stadium. She later said she was singing as loudly as possible to hear herself over the public-address system, so her rendition of the song sounded "screechy". Following her rendition, she mimicked the often-seen actions of players by spitting and grabbing her crotch as if adjusting a protective cup. Barr later said that the Padres had suggested she "bring humor to the song", but many criticized the episode, including President George H. W. Bush, who called her rendition "disgraceful".
Barbara Ehrenreich called Barr a working-class spokesperson representing "the hopeless underclass of the female sex: polyester-clad, overweight occupants of the slow track; fast-food waitresses, factory workers, housewives, members of the invisible pink-collar army; the despised, the jilted, the underpaid", but a master of "the kind of class-militant populism that the Democrats, most of them anyway, never seem to get right." Barr reportedly refused to use the term "blue collar" because she felt it masks the issue of class.
During Roseannes final season, Barr was in negotiations between Carsey-Werner Productions and ABC executives to continue playing Roseanne Conner in a spin-off. After failed discussions with ABC as well as CBS and Fox, Carsey-Werner and Barr agreed not to continue the negotiations.
She released her autobiography in 1989, titled Roseanne—My Life As a Woman. That same year, she made her film debut in She-Devil, playing a scorned housewife, Ruth. Film critic Roger Ebert gave her a positive review saying, "Barr could have made an easy, predictable and dumb comedy at any point in the last couple of years. Instead, she took her chances with an ambitious project—a real movie. It pays off, in that Barr demonstrates that there is a core of reality inside her TV persona, a core of identifiable human feelings like jealousy and pride, and they provide a sound foundation for her comic acting."
In 1991, she voiced the baby Julie in Look Who's Talking Too. She was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actress.
She appeared three times on Saturday Night Live from 1991 to 1994, co-hosting with then-husband Tom Arnold in 1992.
In 1994, she released a second book, My Lives. That same year, Barr became the first female comedian to host the MTV Video Music Awards on her own. She remained the only one to have done so until comedian Chelsea Handler hosted in 2010. In 1997, she made guest appearances on 3rd Rock from the Sun and The Nanny.
In 1998, she portrayed the Wicked Witch of the West in a production of The Wizard of Oz at Madison Square Garden. That same year, Barr hosted her own talk show, The Roseanne Show, which ran for two years before it was canceled in 2000.
In the summer of 2003, she took on the dual role of hosting a cooking show called Domestic Goddess and starring in a reality show called The Real Roseanne Show about hosting a cooking show. Although 13 episodes were in production, a hysterectomy brought a premature end to both projects.
In 2004, she voiced Maggie, one of the main characters in the animated film Home on the Range.
Return to stand-up, television guest appearances, and radio: 2005–2010
In 2005, she returned to stand-up comedy with a world tour and in February 2006, Barr performed her first dates in Europe as part of the Leicester Comedy Festival, England. She released her first children's DVD, Rockin' with Roseanne: Calling All Kids, that month. Barr's return to the stage culminated in an HBO Comedy Special Roseanne Barr: Blonde N Bitchin, which aired November 2006, on HBO. Two nights earlier, Barr had returned to primetime network TV with a guest spot on NBC's My Name Is Earl, playing a crazy trailer park manager.In April 2007, Barr hosted season three of The Search for the Funniest Mom in America on Nick at Nite and in 2008, she headlined an act at the Sahara Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip.
From 2008 to 2013, she and partner Johnny Argent hosted a weekly radio show on Sundays, on KCAA in the Los Angeles area, called "The Roseanne and Johnny Show". From 2009 to 2010, she hosted a politically themed radio show on KPFK.
In April 2009, Barr made an appearance on Bravo's 2nd Annual A-List Awards in the opening scenes. She played Kathy Griffin's fairy godmother, granting her wish to be on the A-List for one night only. In February 2010, Barr headlined the inaugural Traverse City Comedy Arts Festival in a project of the Traverse City Film Festival. Barr appeared in Jordan Brady's documentary about stand-up comedy, I Am Comic.