With Roseanne Barr ousted from her own sitcom due to a mean-spirited and racist tweet targeting former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett, fans of the show have been left wondering what exactly will become of her character in the spinoff. Her co-star John Goodman recently gave us a hint.
Speaking with the U.K.’s Times on Sunday, Goodman finally broke his silence on Roseanne’s tweet, saying it left him “brokenhearted.”
“But I thought, ‘OK, it’s just show business, I’m going to let it go,'” said Goodman. “But I went through a period, about a month, where I was very depressed.”
Goodman added: “I’m a depressive anyway, so any excuse that I can get to lower myself, I will. But that had a great deal to do with it, more than I wanted to admit.”
The infamous Twitter rant, which resulted in the cancellation of Roseanne’s hit show on ABC, compared the former Obama aide to an ape. Roseanne initially claimed she didn’t realize that Jarrett, who was born to parents of African-American and European descent, was black. While the tweet was admittedly racist, Goodman said he knows that Roseanne is not a racist person.
“I know for a fact that she’s not a racist,” he said, going on to imply that ABC should not have canceled her show so suddenly. “I’ll put it this way, I was surprised at the response. And that’s probably all I should say about it.”
In the upcoming spinoff, “The Conners,” Goodman hinted that her character will be killed off. “I guess he’ll be mopey and sad because his wife’s dead,” said Goodman of his character, Dan.
Goodman thanked Roseanne for allowing the show to go forward without her involvement so that cast and crew can keep their jobs.
“I sent her an email and thanked her for that,” Goodman said. “I did not hear anything back, but she was going through hell at the time. And she’s still going through hell.”