Roseanne Barr's ex-husband says he knew reboot would 'not end well'

'I had a feeling this was going to happen when I first heard it was coming back'

Tom Arnold – actor, former writer on the original series of Roseanne, and ex-husband of Roseanne Barr – has spoken out about the reboot’s cancellation.

Speaking on CNN, Arnold told Anderson Cooper that he was concerned about Barr’s behaviour before the decision was made for the show to return to ABC for a new series, following its conclusion in 1997.

“I had a feeling this was going to happen when I first heard it was coming back,” he said. “When I read her social media in the very beginning, and I saw how she was so into the conspiracy stuff with Donald Trump and so how far gone she was, and the ‘pizzagate’ and Hillary is a pedophile and Obama wasn’t born here, she was, you know, a ‘birther,’ and how crazy that was -- I just knew that this would not end well.”

The show was cancelled by ABC after Barr fired off a series of racist tweets comparing Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett to a character from Planet of the Apes and linking her to the Islamist organisation Muslim Brotherhood.

Barr wrote, “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj” in replying to a tweet claiming Jarrett helped with cover-ups during the Obama administration.

In a statement, ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey wrote: “Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show.”

Barr later deleted the tweet and later apologised for “making a bad joke about her politics and her looks”. She said: “I should have known better. Forgive me – my joke was in bad taste.”

Addressing her fans, she later wrote: “Guys I did something unforgiveable so do not defend me. It was 2 in the morning and I was ambien tweeting... went 2 far & do not want it defended. Not giving excuses for what I did (tweeted) but I’ve done weird stuff while on ambien”.

Arnold, who was married to Barr for four years prior to their divorce in 1994, told CNN that she had a long history of racist tweets.

“It’s a meme that she and thousands of her alt-right fans do,” Arnold said. “They love calling black people monkeys. It’s not a one time joke, OK. They do it because we have a white trash racist president. That’s a fact. Donald Trump -- Roseanne and I have both known him 30 years. That’s an absolute fact.”

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