Roseanne Barr Blasts ‘The Conners’ for Asking Her to Return as a Ghost: “You Killed Me Off — Now You Want Me Back?”

Roseanne Barr has made it crystal clear: she has no intention of returning to The Conners, not even as a ghost.

In her new documentary Roseanne Barr Is America, the 72-year-old comedian claims she was approached by producers of the ABC sitcom with an offer to guest star as the spirit of her former character — a proposal she found both insulting and ironic, given the circumstances of her departure from the series.

“They called me and asked me if I would like to come back as a guest star. ‘You’re coming back as a ghost,’” Barr says in the documentary, directed by Joel Gilbert, according to People.

Her response? A hard no.

“You’re asking me to come back to the show that you f—ing stole from me and killed my ass, and now you want me to show up because you got sh—y f—ing ratings and play a ghost?” Barr exclaims in the film.

She says she declined with a dose of sarcasm: “I’m gonna be bowling that f—ing week.”

From Sitcom Icon to Specter

Barr’s original sitcom Roseanne was a cultural touchstone from 1988 to 1997, depicting a blue-collar Midwestern family with Barr at the helm as the sharp-tongued matriarch. The show was revived in 2018 to massive ratings — but was abruptly canceled after just one season when Barr posted a racist tweet about former Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett.

ABC swiftly denounced her comment, with then-entertainment president Channing Dungey calling the tweet “abhorrent, repugnant, and inconsistent with our values.”

Barr has since claimed that she was divinely inspired to make the tweet, and alleged that ABC was monitoring her and trying to silence her due to her support for Donald Trump.

Following her dismissal, the network quickly retooled the show into The Conners, a spinoff led by John Goodman, Laurie Metcalf, Sara Gilbert, and Lecy Goranson. To explain her character’s absence, the series killed off Roseanne with a storyline involving an accidental opioid overdose.

“Within three weeks, they revived the show as The Conners, and of course they killed off my character Roseanne in an opioid overdose,” Barr says in the documentary. “Which was staggering because Glenn Quinn, who played Becky’s husband, actually died of an opioid overdose.”

Saying Goodbye — Again

The Conners wrapped up its run this April after seven seasons. The series finale didn’t shy away from the show’s origins. In a full-circle moment, Dan Conner (Goodman) attended a legal deposition in the family’s lawsuit against a pharmaceutical company over Roseanne’s death.

Later, the Conner family — Dan, Darlene (Sara Gilbert), Becky (Lecy Goranson), and Jackie (Laurie Metcalf) — visited Roseanne’s grave, in a moment that brought the show’s complicated history to the forefront.

According to executive producer and showrunner Bruce Helford, the creative team was “nervous” about invoking Barr in the finale. But they ultimately felt it necessary to bring closure to a story that began with her character.

A Legacy in Limbo

Barr’s career has remained controversial in the years since her firing, but she continues to speak out through projects like Roseanne Barr Is America. The documentary paints a portrait of a woman who feels wronged by the very industry she once dominated — and who has no interest in making peace with it on someone else’s terms.

Whether or not audiences agree with her, one thing is clear: Roseanne Barr won’t be haunting The Conners — at least not willingly.