Roseanne Barr is unhappy that Jimmy Kimmel is back on the air.
The former sitcom star, whose award-winning Roseanne was canceled in 2018 after she published a racist social media post about former Barack Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett, believes a “double standard” is at play in ABC lifting its suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live! after just five days.
“It just shows how they think. I got my whole life ruined, no forgiveness, all of my work stolen, and called a racist for time and eternity, for racially misgendering someone,” she told NewsNation on Tuesday. “It’s a double standard.”
In the May 2018 post, Barr wrote that Jarrett, who is Black, was equivalent to “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby.” Though the comedian deleted and apologized for the post hours after publishing, ABC canceled the Roseanne reboot, with former network president Channing Dungey commenting, “Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show.”
Looking back on the time, Barr claimed that Kimmel “called me a racist even though I said repeatedly, which they repeatedly censored, that it was a mistake. I thought that the woman was a white woman from Iran.” Barr pointed out that the Jimmy Kimmel Live! host “called me a racist even though he himself appeared in blackface on their network many times.”
Entertainment Weekly has reached out to Kimmel for comment.
Kimmel did previously appear on television in blackface on numerous occasions, impersonating basketball player Karl Malone. Those appearances occurred on his former sketch comedy series The Man Show, however, which aired on Comedy Central.
“There is nothing more important to me than your respect, and I apologize to those who were genuinely hurt or offended by the makeup I wore or the words I spoke,” Kimmel shared in a statement addressing the appearances in 2020.
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Kimmel again found himself in hot water last week when, in his Sept. 15 monologue on Jimmy Kimmel Live, he said of the MAGA response to the killing of Charlie Kirk: “We had some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and with everything they can to score political points from it.”
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The following day, FCC Chair Brendan Carr encouraged broadcasters to preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live, which station owners Sinclair and Nexstar did later in the day. On Wednesday, ABC suspended Kimmel’s long-running late-night show, sparking a huge outcry from the entertainment community, politicians, and others, citing the government’s actions in the matter as, among other things, coercion, extortion, and a violation of the First Amendment’s protection of free speech.
Nexstar and Sinclair have lobbied the government for deregulation over ownership of television stations, which would allow the companies to increase the percentage of U.S. households they reach. Nextstar recently made headlines when it announced a $6.2 billion deal in August to acquire another broadcast station owner, Tegna, a deal that would require government approval.
Kimmel has long been a target of President Donald Trump, however. Trump threatened in July that the comedian was “NEXT to go” after CBS canceled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Barr blamed Kimmel’s inaction on her behalf for his current circumstances.
“I think he’ll cheer himself on and his fans, all — what is it? — 2,000 of them. They’ll feel heartened and like they won another battle against Trump and the people of the United States. So it’ll be a big celebration,” Barr predicted of Kimmel’s return, adding that if the host “had defended me, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.”
Jimmy Kimmel Live! returns to ABC on Tuesday at 11:35 p.m. ET/PT.
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