What To Know
- Michael Fishman publicly defended the show’s cancellation and Roseanne Barr’s firing after her racist tweet.
- Fishman criticized those who justify or downplay Barr’s remarks.
- While expressing compassion for Barr as a person, Fishman reminded fans that freedom of speech comes with consequences.
An emotional Michael Fishman hit back at commenters who claimed that Roseanne Barr was unfairly fired from 2018’s Roseanne revival, which was ultimately canceled and revived as The Conners.
Fishman, who played Roseanne’s son DJ Conner on the hit sitcom, shared a video on Instagram responding to a comment that read, “The reboot got canceled because Roseanne made the usual jokes a comedian makes, but America decided to backstab Roseanne. At the time the LGBTQ and woke crap took over and started destroying anything it could.”
The comment continued, “Roseanne was one of the people that all of a sudden got flack [sic] for remaining to be a edgy comedian. Funny thing is even if she was racist, she had already said more egregious jokes and nobody batted an eye before.”
ABC canceled the Roseanne revival after Barr compared former Barack Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett to “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby.” While Barr later deleted the post and apologized, ABC stood by its decision, with former network president Channing Dungey saying, “Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show.”
In his video response, Fishman said, “I get this every day, I get these kinds of ignorant and inaccurate comments daily. Mostly, I try to ignore them. For over eight years, I’ve been dealing with it quietly. Usually, I don’t respond.”
Fishman credited the commenter in question for at least not sending him “death threats,” adding, “After eight years, turning the other cheek is really not helping. So, I guess the world failed to learn the lesson, so I’m going to point out — we are perpetuating a lie, and people are using a political smoke screen to justify the indefensible.”
The actor noted that Barr herself called her comments “indefensible,” and that people trying to find justification for such hateful rhetoric are “leading to real consequences. Real crimes, situations like Trey Reed and Tasha Fortune, because dehumanizing people is never a joke.”
Fishman agreed that comedians and actors have freedom of speech, but “that doesn’t mean there’s no responsibility and no consequences. The brilliant comedians help us laugh at the darkest, darkest topics. Sadly, in this case, there was no joke. And the show was rightfully canceled. It’s the last time I’m really gonna go into this.”
He reiterated that he thought what Barr said was wrong, but added, “Good people make mistakes. And I love the one who made this mistake. I always will. I’ll always have compassion and love, and I’ve shown it continuously, and she helped the world understand that good people can make mistakes.”
Again, Fishman said there was “no joke” in Barr’s comments, “only damage and dehumanizing and perpetuating racial tropes… And the only people who are backstabbed were the people who were targeted by the statements. And those who became collateral damage from it.”
Fishman told commenters who were defending hateful statements and leaving racist messages to “shut the hell up.”
“Don’t finish the statement. Don’t hit send and certainly don’t rage against anybody else,” he stated. “Because words have real world consequences. And some of us deal with them every day. That’s freedom of speech.”
You can watch Fishman’s full statement in the video above and let us know your thoughts below.