John Goodman breaks silence on Roseanne axing: ‘I was broken-hearted’

ROSEANNE patriarch John Goodman has broken his silence on the scandal engulfing his co-star, claiming he knows “for a fact” that she’s not racist.

JOHN Goodman was shocked at Roseanne Barr‘s tweets about Valerie Jarrett — in which she referred to the former Barack Obama adviser as a product of the Muslim brotherhood and “Planet of the Apes” — because he doesn’t believe his longtime co-star is racist.

Still, he was even more shocked when ABC axed the Roseanne reboot after her tirade.

“I was surprised. I’ll put it this way, I was surprised at the response, and that’s probably all I should say about it,” Goodman, 66, told The Times. “I know, I know, for a fact that she’s not a racist.”

Goodman has worked with Barr since the show first aired in 1988. Picture: ABC/Adam Rose

Barr, 65, previously denied that her tweets were racist, initially blaming them on the prescription drug Ambien, then saying that her comments about Jarrett were about the Iran deal and anti-Semitism and that she “thought the b**ch was white”.

MORE: Infamous story from Roseanne writer’s room

The cast returned for the reboot. Credit: ABC/Robert Trachtenberg

After ABC cancelled the series, Barr scrambled back to Twitter to beg the higher-ups to change their minds, but the network claimed the firing came after alleged “multiple instances” of Barr’s misbehaviour.

“I was broken-hearted [when the show got cancelled], but I thought, ‘OK, it’s just show business, I’m going to let it go,’” Goodman said of his initial reaction at the May cancellation of the hit series. “But I went through a period, about a month, where I was very depressed. 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 network later greenlit a spin-off of Roseanne, called The Conners, which would keep all the cast and crew of the Roseanne reboot, save for the troubled titular star.

Barr has been removed from the series. Picture: ABC/Adam Rose

Goodman confirmed that Barr agreed to forgo all profits from the show in order for it to continue.

“She had to sign a paper saying that she relinquished all her rights to the show so that we could go on,” he said. “I sent her an email and thanked her for that. I did not hear anything back, but she was going through hell at the time. And she’s still going through hell.”

Goodman, who previously credited Barr with helping him recover from alcoholism, also hinted that her character on the show would be killed, saying of his character, “I guess he’ll be mopey and sad because his wife’s dead.”

On the bright side, in real life, Barr announced this weekend that she has new doctors and is “doing better now,” though she didn’t specify what was ailing her previously.

This story originally appeared in the NY Post and is republished here with permission.