After the “pro-Trump” revival of “Roseanne” drew a stunning 25 million viewers, pictures of Roseanne Barr dressed as Hitler and baking human-shaped cookies have resurfaced. In an interview this week with The Hollywood Reporter, “Roseanne” co-showrunner Bruce Helford addressed the pictures and Roseanne’s off-air persona.
Below are the photos, taken for a satirical Jewish magazine back in 2009, which some are suggesting should result in Barr getting the ax, like Trump-decapitating Kathy Griffin:
Barr, who is Jewish and strongly pro-Israel, took the images for the Jewish satirical Heeb magazine. Snopes provides some context:
These photographs are real. However, they are frequently shared without important accompanying context. The series of images were originally part of a 2009 article in a “Germany” issue of Heebmagazine, a satirical Jewish publication that ran between 2001 and 2010. (An infrequently updated version of the magazine still exists online.) In the article which originally accompanied these photographs, entitled “That Oven Feelin’,” author Oliver Noble wrote that Roseanne asked to dress up as Hitler for the spread, as she believes (or at least jokingly said that she believes) that she may be the reincarnation of the Führer himself.
Asked by THR about the photos and Barr’s social media posts in general, Helford said the show is about Roseanne Conner not Roseanne Barr.
“The show is not representing her personal politics,” said Helford. “The Conners were Bill Clinton voters back in the day. Those people have very heavily shifted toward Trump. We did our due diligence on what all that would be about. And the show, aside from the fact that Roseanne Barr and Roseanne Conner both happen to be Trump supporters, has been borne out to be pretty realistic, in terms of the demographics of that area [the Midwest]. But aside from that, there’s a big difference between anyone’s personal politics and what the show is about. They’re not meant to be interrelated in any way.”
Asked specifically about how he feels seeing the star of his show “dressed as a Nazi,” Helford underscored Roseanne’s support of Israel.
“I know that Roseanne is a very staunch supporter of Israel and she has said as much. I imagine there’s probably some amount of parody involved and all that. I don’t know the context of that so I wouldn’t make a comment on it,” he said.
“My feeling is that people should just watch the show and judge it on its merits,” he continued. “Watch the show without the accompanying background noise. Everybody, including Roseanne, wanted the show to be balanced. When we talk about wanting to open a dialogue in America, that’s something that the show does. We’re not trying to perform brain surgery or cure cancer. We all hoped that this would open a dialogue where people would start laughing at themselves a little bit, get a little less polarized and realize that this is a universal conversation.”
Asked if he feels that the show is “monetizing Trump’s base” and ignoring “very real racism of many white working-class families,” Helford replied, “I’ll just say keep watching the show. We certainly deal with some of those things, but monetizing Trump’s base? No. We have no agenda, one direction or the other, in terms of anything regarding the show, but we do deal with aspects of how the Conners perceive people who are different than they are.”
As to how he feels about Trump taking credit for the ratings, Helford laughed it off, citing examples of previous presidents’ connections to other shows. “In any case, everybody wants to be part of a winner, so everybody sort of jumps in,” he said.