Roseanne Confesses: ''I Faked It!''
Roseanne Barr's big comeback was aborted last summer when her two reality shows — The Real Roseanne Show and Domestic Goddess — were canceled within days of each other. The ax swung soon after it was announced that the one-time sitcom queen had to undergo an emergency hysterectomy. "I had a choice between continuing on or having an organ removed," Barr says. "I immediately chose having an organ removed."
Well, there's a little more to the story than that. The reality is that ABC's Real Roseanne Show was tanking in the ratings, which didn't bode well for the then-forthcoming ABC Family spinoff, Domestic Goddess. Plus, as Barr laments, her first foray into unscripted TV "was too hard. It was all a big, big mess."
For example, Barr reveals, Real Roseanne "was totally faked. They had me doing things on that show that I never do in real life — like get out of bed and shower and exercise and talk to people." Producers encouraged her to fall back on old habits, like "screaming at people, and that isn't what I do anymore. They kept on trying to fix it so I would go off [on people] and I never would because I'm on a spiritual journey.
"After doing that show," she continues, "I learned that fake reality sucks, too."
So, what's the lesson here, kiddies? Well, let's ask Barr herself. "I had this one TV show, [ABC's late, great Roseanne], which was at No. 1 and I was a raving bitch. I wondered if I [could] get a good show by being nice. Of course," she concludes, "the answer is no."
Barr currently can be heard voicing a cow in Disney's new animated flick, Home on the Range.