Roseanne Barr says a message from God led her to post the tweet that destroyed her career.
“The way I feel about it is that God told me to do what I did,” Barr told Variety in a new interview.
The tweet, posted in 2018, targeted Valerie Jarrett, a former advisor to President Barack Obama. Barr replied to a photo of Helena Bonham Carter in Planet of the Apes makeup with the words: “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.”
Jarrett is Black.
The backlash was swift. ABC canceled her show Roseanne, which had just returned with strong ratings.
“It was a nuclear bomb,” Barr said about the fallout.
Barr has always claimed she didn’t know Jarrett was Black when she tweeted. But even now that she does, she stands by it.
“To me it was the perfect caption,” she told Variety.
She went further, saying her critics were the real racists.
“They were so racist that they thought my tweet said Black people look like monkeys when it was about Planet of the Apes, which is a movie about fascism,” Barr said. “Rod Serling himself said it’s about the Jews in Germany. It is not a movie about Black people.”
She also suggested the tweet was meant to spark political interest.
“The day of my tweet, over 2 million Americans Googled Valerie Jarrett and the Iran deal. And that was my intent. So, whatever,” she said.
