Roseanne Barr said John Goodman declined a cameo in her new eight-episode sitcom, a setback that kept her from turning the project into a full-blown Roseanne reunion. Barr said her son called Goodman and asked him to appear on Meemaw: A Modern Day Fable, but he said no.
The disclosure matters now because Barr is still trying to get Meemaw: A Modern Day Fable into distribution, and the failed cameo attempt shows how hard she is working to reconnect with the TV past that made her famous. She and Goodman starred as Roseanne and Dan Conner on Roseanne for 10 seasons, and the show later returned for one season in 2018 before ABC canceled the revival after Barr posted a racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett.
Barr said she does not get along with Goodman or Laurie Metcalf, even as Goodman has publicly described their history in warmer terms. In 2025, he said they had not talked for about seven or eight years and added that he would doubt she wanted to talk to him, while in earlier interviews he said he knew she was not a racist and that he felt terrible about how everything ended.
That gap between distance and affection sits at the center of Barr’s latest pitch. She has said she deleted the tweet, called it egregious and blamed the late hour and Ambien, later saying she thought Valerie Jarrett was white and insisting it was not a racist tweet. Michael Fishman said the show was rightfully canceled, Barr said she was heartbroken after their back-and-forth, and The Conners went on without her, killing off her character in its first episode.
For now, the practical question is not whether the old cast will reunite. It is whether Barr can land a distributor for Meemaw: A Modern Day Fable, an eight-episode, single-camera sitcom she says was financed with private investors and also stars Randy Quaid. She has also said she reached out to Elon Musk about the project, but he has not called her back.
