“Roseanne” showrunner and executive producer Bruce Helford says Americans should just ignore the star’s highly-offensive and controversial recent and past actions and remarks. Last week a 2009 profile in a magazine about Jewish culture was unearthed showing Roseanne Barr dressed up as Hitler, complete with mustache and swastika armband, pulling burnt “Jew cookies” out of an oven.
Asked if Barr dressing up as Hitler, and “her social media posts — sharing conspiracy theories, etc. — impact the message that you’re trying to send with the show?” Helford would not respond directly.
“All I can say on that is that I was listening to a CNN discussion and the subject came up of her personal politics and the attitude was generally, look, everybody’s got the right to say what they’re gonna say and that’s not what the show is,” Helford told The Hollywood Reporter.
“The show is not representing her personal politics. The Conners were Bill Clinton voters back in the day. Those people have very heavily shifted toward Trump,” he said.
But that’s not correct. The show clearly injects some of Barr’s politics. Even the right-leaning Mediaite says Barr’s “TV character is heavily-based on the actress who plays her.”
Helford claims they “did our due diligence on what all that would be about. And the show, aside from the fact that Roseanne Barr and Roseanne Conner both happen to be Trump supporters, has been borne out to be pretty realistic, in terms of the demographics of that area [the Midwest]. But aside from that, there’s a big difference between anyone’s personal politics and what the show is about. They’re not meant to be interrelated in any way.”
What the producers “meant” and how many viewers – among them, President Donald Trump – see the show, then, is very different.
And Helford’s claim that they did their due dilligence is shattered when he’s asked specifically, “How do you feel seeing the star of your show dressed as a Nazi?”
“I know that Roseanne is a very staunch supporter of Israel and she has said as much. I imagine there’s probably some amount of parody involved and all that. I don’t know the context of that so I wouldn’t make a comment on it,” he says.
To repeat: “I don’t know the context of that.”
Clearly, no “due diligence.”
“My feeling,” Helford continues, plugging the show, “is that people should just watch the show and judge it on its merits. Watch the show without the accompanying background noise. Everybody, including Roseanne, wanted the show to be balanced. When we talk about wanting to open a dialogue in America, that’s something that the show does. We’re not trying to perform brain surgery or cure cancer. We all hoped that this would open a dialogue where people would start laughing at themselves a little bit, get a little less polarized and realize that this is a universal conversation. Lots of families find themselves divided on these issues. There’s got to be a way to talk and still love each other the way that Roseanne and Jackie made their peace [in the revival’s premiere]. And that’s really what we want to have come out of it.”
Some on social media were not buying Helford’s argument: