Roseanne Barr says John Goodman rejected offer to appear in her new sitcom… after they fell out following her ‘racist’ social media scandal

DAILYMAIL.COM • 59m ago

By JACQUES PETERSON, US ASSISTANT SHOWBIZ EDITOR 00:31 21 Oct 2026, updated 00:36 21 Oct 2026

Roseanne Barr is set to return to the small screen soon with her own self-funded sitcom, but she won’t be joined by any of her former Roseanne co-stars.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter about the upcoming series, which is titled MeeMaw, Barr said that John Goodman, who played her on-screen husband in Roseanne for a decade, turned down a guest role.

Barr’s old castmates famously turned on her in 2018 after she posted an offensive remark on Twitter, which led to her being fired from ABC’s Roseanne reboot.

She is no longer on speaking terms with any of them, including Goodman.

‘Nobody is more brokenhearted than me. I just choose to remember the fun and the good times,’ she reflected.

‘My son called Goodman and asked him to do a cameo on Meemaw and he declined.’

Barr said that she once considered her Roseanne castmates ‘family’, before singling out Sara Gilbert and Wanda Sykes for publicly turning on her in the wake of her ‘racist’ tweet.

The Daily Mail has reached out to Goodman for comment.

In 2018, Goodman described his relationship with Barr as ‘work friends’ to the Sunday Times, but said, ‘I know, I know, for a fact that she’s not a racist.’

He offered her some more public support in 2023 in an interview with Variety, saying, ‘I felt bad for her. I just feel terrible about the whole thing. We had a great time. And I love her. She’s just her own person.’

After being canceled eight years ago, Barr is now shopping around Meemaw in the hopes of staging a major comeback.

The controversial comedian will be joined by a number of other right-leaning stars in the politically-incorrect series, which she co-funded herself with Just the News founder John Solomon.

The cast includes Sopranos actress Drea de Matteo, actors Randy Quaid and Jon Lovitz, and comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, all of whom made headlines in recent years for their support of Donald Trump.

In Meemaw, Barr plays ‘a fiercely patriotic prepper grandma’ with a ‘mixed-race family’ who ‘sets out to save America, take down a criminal empire, and throw her granddaughter the perfect Bat Mitzvah.’

Quaid, 76, plays Barr’s on-screen husband, while de Matteo, 54, plays her daughter.

Some of the cast members are bound to cause a stir in Hollywood, namely Hinchcliffe, who sparked widespread outrage in 2024 when he compared Puerto Rico to a ‘floating island of garbage’ at a campaign rally for Donald Trump.

Quaid will also raise some eyebrows, as he once called for a do-over of the 2020 presidential election after Trump lost to Joe Biden.

While de Matteo identifies as an independent, the actress-turned-OnlyFans sensation has previously voiced support for Trump and voted for him in the 2024 election.

‘I don’t want to sound too corny but f**k it – working with Roseanne might be one of the most cherished highlights of my entire life,’ de Matteo gushed to the Daily Mail earlier this month.

Despite Meemaw’s conservative cast, Barr insists that the series will ‘make fun of everybody’ and is not exclusively targeting progressives.

‘I’ve got some great jokes about Republicans that the lefties are gonna love,’ she told The Hollywood Reporter.

Barr was widely condemned in 2018 after she tweeted that Valerie Jarrett, who is African-American and advised former president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, looked like the ‘Muslim brotherhood and Planet of the Apes had a baby.’

I’m Andrew Court, LA Showbiz Editor and celebrity connoisseur.

I’ve spent the past decade chasing down celebrity scoops and scandals, and now I’m bringing the best of them straight to your inbox.

While she initially defended herself against accusations of racism, she later publicly apologized to Jarrett ‘for making a bad joke’ and even removed herself from Twitter (now X).

She also insisted she had no idea about Jarrett’s African-American ancestry when she made the post.

However, Barr’s apology did little to quell the backlash and ABC ended up canceling her rebooted sitcom Roseanne despite it being the third highest-rated show on television that year.

Barr’s axing had further consequences for her career as she was also dropped by her then-agent shortly after.

The reboot of the show, which originally ran from 1988 to 1997, looked at how the working class Conner family were faring during the Trump era.

Along with Barr and Fishman, the short-lived show saw the return of original stars like Goodman, Gilbert and Laurie Metcalf.

Shortly after Roseanne’s cancellation in 2018, ABC greenlit a spin-off series The Conners, which brought back all of the Roseanne stars except Barr, whose character was killed off via an opioid overdose. The Conners ran for seven seasons until 2025.

Unable to find work in Hollywood after that, Barr returned to comedy and also launched a podcast.

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