Canceling Roseanne was an easy decision for ABC, despite the fact that it was the No. 1 comedy on TV at the time.
In an new interview with Deadline, ABC president Channing Dungey said: “[The decision] was actually made very swiftly, and what I’m going to have to say is that it was nice that it was so clear to everyone that there wasn’t a lot of debate and discussion about it.”
She added: “We knew what we wanted to do, and we did it. For us, we have had multiple instances with Roseanne, and certainly this tweet crossed the line that cannot be crossed, but it was for us a sense of enough is enough and something had to be done.”
ABC quickly nixed Roseanne after its titular star issued a series of racist tweets in which she compared former Barack Obama aide Valerie Jarrett to an ape. The 65-year-old Roseanne Barr later claimed she thought the “b***h was white” in a bonkers YouTube video, adding that her remarks were really about the “Iran deal.”Before that, Barr had claimed Ambien was to blame for her tweets, before opining that she was fired because she voted for Donald Trump.“We obviously knew that she had a slightly volatile history in the previous incarnation of Roseanne,” Dungey said. “She had come to us very clear that she wanted to make the show a priority, really wanting a second chance at this and we took that at face value. I don’t regret it, I am never going to regret waking up that morning and seeing the ratings from that first season … It’s been a journey with ups and downs.”She is excited to give the rest of the cast and crew of Roseanne an opportunity to continue in The Conners, the spinoff due this fall.