Jerry Seinfeld Shares Controversial Statements On Roseanne Barr's Firing

Jerry Seinfeld doesn’t agree with how the Roseanne Barr situation was handled. The ratings juggernaut Roseanne revival was canceled in May after the star and creator sent a racist tweet, but Seinfeld doesn’t think it was “necessary” to fire her.

While promoting his Netflix series Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee, Seinfeld sat down with Entertainment Tonight and questioned why ABC would fire her. “Why would you murder someone who’s committing suicide?” he asked. Seinfeld didn’t explicitly say why she shouldn’t have lost her job for the now-deleted tweet about former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, in which Barr compared Jarrett, who is Black, to an ape. However, he did say that he “never saw someone ruin their entire career with one button push,” adding, “That was fresh.”

Seinfeld also doesn’t think the tweet should have led to the cancellation of the show. “I think they should get another Roseanne,” he said, noting that they brought John Goodman’s character Dan Conner back after it was revealed that he had died in the original run of the series. “He was dead,” Seinfeld said, “and they brought him back. So, why can’t we get another Roseanne?”

Over the weekend, it was revealed that the cast of Roseanne minus Barr would be reteaming for a spin-off about the Conner family. But Seinfeld thinks they should have just continued Roseanne with another actress. “There’s other funny women that could do that part. You need to get the comic in there,” Seinfeld said. “I hate to see a comic lose a job.”

ABC has greenlit a 10-episode, straight to series order of The Conners, which will reportedly focus on “the Conner family who, after a sudden turn of events, are forced to face the daily struggles of life in Lanford in a way they never have before.” No word yet on how the show will write out Barr’s matriarch, but it’s clear she will have no connection to the series. In a statement to Refinery29, ABC said The Conners is “a spin-off of the Roseanne series for ABC without Barr’s further creative or financial participation.”