ABC fired Roseanne Barr in 2018 and pulled the plug on the hottest sitcom in all of America.
Eight years later, the boy who played her TV son went public and said the network got it right.
Roseanne torched him on a podcast, and the way he answered back caught fans completely off guard.
Roseanne Tore Into Michael Fishman On Can't Be Censored
Michael Fishman played D.J. Conner for nearly a decade on Roseanne.
In August, he declared that the 2018 reboot was rightfully canceled.
Roseanne fired back on the Can't Be Censored podcast on September 23, and she let him have it with both barrels.
"He f—ing doesn't even f—ing know what I said, even though I've explained it 10,000 times for nine years on the internet," Barr said.
"He hasn't even taken the time to listen to what I say because he's a bigot. And he's a brainwashed bigot."
She said Fishman pestered her about her comments "9,000" times before she finally told him off.
"You are an ignoramus and a bigot, and you have no idea what I said because it contradicts the Democratic Party platform that you've had shoved down your throat," she recalled telling him.
That is vintage Roseanne – no filter, no publicist, no apology tour.
Fishman Answered With a Swipe About His Childhood
Fishman didn't trade insults.
He posted a video statement on Instagram instead, playing the wounded peacemaker.
He said he showed Barr "compassion" during the 2018 scandal even though he "vehemently disagreed" with her.
He admitted her memory of how she shut him down was accurate.
Then he slipped the knife in.
"But I guess she gave you a glimpse into the darker side of my childhood," he said.
He promised to "set some healthy boundaries" and "make art from the joy and the pain."
Bob Iger and Channing Dungey Made the Call
The Roseanne revival premiered in March 2018 to more than 18 million viewers.
Middle America finally saw a working-class family on TV that looked like them – and a lead character who voted for Trump.
President Trump personally called Barr to congratulate her on the ratings.
Two months later, Barr posted a tweet about former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett.
She apologized for it again and again, and she has always insisted she had no idea Jarrett was Black and that the jab was aimed at the Obama administration's dealings with Iran.
ABC didn't care.
ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey called the tweet "abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values" and canceled the show within hours.
Disney CEO Bob Iger rushed to cheer the decision on social media.
"There was only one thing to do here, and that was the right thing," Iger posted.
President Trump called out the double standard.
Iger picked up the phone for Jarrett, Trump noted, but never called to apologize for the horrible things said about him on ABC.
"Iger, where is my call of apology?" Trump asked.
Within a month, the network announced The Conners – the same cast, the same set, minus the woman whose name was on the door.
Then the writers killed her character off with an opioid overdose.
The Conners Never Came Close to What ABC Threw Away
ABC bet it could keep the Roseanne audience without Roseanne.
It lost that bet.
The Conners debuted to roughly 10 million viewers – about eight million fewer than the revival's opening night.
By the series finale in April 2025, it was pulling around three million.
Barr says ABC even called her back to guest star as a ghost on the show built out of her firing.
She turned them down flat.
Hollywood has run this play before.
Disney fired Gina Carano from The Mandalorian in 2021 over a social media post comparing the treatment of conservatives to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany.
In August 2025, Disney settled her wrongful termination lawsuit – funded by Elon Musk's X – and suddenly said she "was always well respected by her directors, co-stars, and staff."
The studio fires the conservative star, the co-workers keep their jobs by staying quiet or piling on, and years later the audience figures out who was really loyal to whom.
Fishman wants to be the compassionate one in this story.
But when ABC erased Roseanne, he stayed put for four seasons of The Conners – until the network told him in 2022 that D.J. wasn't coming back either.
Now he's siding with the same network that showed him the door.
Roseanne may use language that would make a sailor blush.
Millions of Americans still know exactly why they tuned in to her show in March 2018 – and exactly why they stopped watching when Bob Iger threw her out.
Sources:
- Lori Bashian and Stephanie Giang-Paunon, "Roseanne Barr calls former co-star a 'brainwashed bigot' after he said reboot was 'rightfully canceled,'" Fox News, September 24, 2026.
- Fox News Staff, "Trump personally called Roseanne to congratulate her on ratings," Fox News, March 29, 2018.
- Brooke Singman, "Trump blasts 'double standard' at ABC: 'Where is my call of apology?'" Fox News, May 31, 2018.
- Robert Iger, post quoting ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey on the Roseanne cancellation, X, May 29, 2018.
- David Spector, "Gina Carano lawsuit against Disney concludes with settlement deal," Fox Business, August 7, 2025.
