Roseanne Barr is opening up about the tweet that ended her career at ABC.
Barr said in a clip from Tuesday’s episode of “VICE News Tonight” that she was visiting her mother in Utah when she sent the fateful tweet. She said she woke up just after 2 a.m., sent the tweet that suggested Valerie Jarrett was a product of the Muslim Brotherhood and the “Planet of the Apes,” and fell back asleep. When she woke up later that morning, her tweet was all over the news.
“It was characterized as racist, which just made my stomach fall to my feet,” Barr said. “And then the network called and said, what possible excuse could you have for something you’ve done which is unforgivable and some other word that I can’t remember.”
“And then I said I’d be happy to go on all the ABC shows and explain it, and apologize. But they said no, I wasn’t allowed to do that. Not too long after that, my mom was watching TV and saw that it was canceled. And that was just the beginning.”
Vice released other excerpts from the interview not featured in the clip above, in which Barr said she’s been using her free time to experience more “real-life stuff,” which includes catching up on up to 17 hours of sleep a day.
“You know, now that I have extra time I really wanna redo all my files and my pictures you know, get them all in order. So that’s what I’ve been working on. So I’m back to what I always did, which is try to get my pictures and my files together. I need a lot of organization. I’m bad at that,” she told the outlet. “I’ve got a lot of time for real life, real-life stuff. Like, just going for a walk with my mom and having an ice cream cone. Stuff like that. Waiting in lines, I’ve really been sleeping a lot, like, probably 17 hours a day.”
Barr also said that she recently took up smoking.
“[I] started smoking… I have struggled with mental health issues and I was struggling at that time as well,” she said. “My whole life I’ve been under punches, not just my career. My life. Ya, I’ve been under punches forever.”
See the full interview on VICE News Tonight Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. on HBO. “The Conners” premieres Tuesday, Oct. 16 at 8 p.m. on ABC.