Roseanne Barr's character has been killed off in the premiere of The Conners, but the former TV star has taken to Twitter to protest the narrative turn.
"I AIN'T DEAD BITCHES," Barr tweeted. Barr and her spiritual teacher Rabbi Shmuley Boteach also released a longer statement regarding the on-screen death on Tuesday night.
"While we wish the very best for the cast and production crew of 'The Conners,' all of whom are deeply dedicated to their craft and were Roseanne's cherished colleagues, we regret that ABC chose to cancel 'Roseanne' by killing off the Roseanne Conner character.
"That it was done through an opioid overdose lent an unnecessary grim and morbid dimension to an otherwise happy family show," the statement reads.
It went on to slam ABC's cancellation of Roseanne, calling it a result of "fear, hubris, and a refusal to forgive."
In May, Roseanne was cancelled after Barr posted a tweet comparing former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett to an ape.
Barr apologised and said the tweet was political, not racist, in its nature. But she agreed to step away from the show she created and will have no financial or creative involvement in The Conners spin-off.
Audiences had last seen Roseanne Conner hiding an opioid addiction stemming from knee pain and about to undergo long-delayed, costly surgery.
In the first episode of The Conners, the family is shown struggling to come to terms with the death of Roseanne from what is first thought to be a heart attack but is later revealed to be an opioid overdose.
They find she had been hiding painkillers all over the house, and getting them from a circle of friends who shared medication to avoid costs.
The original Roseanne ran from 1988 to 1997 and was praised for its realistic portrayal of working-class life. The revival in March, in which Barr played a supporter of Republican US President Donald Trump, was ABC's biggest hit, drawing an average 18 million viewers per episode.
The opioid theme at the centre of The Conners could hardly be more topical.
Addiction to opioids - mostly prescription painkillers, heroin and fentanyl - has reached epidemic proportions in the United States. According to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, opioids were involved in more than 49,000 deaths last year.
Executive producer Bruce Rasmussen said the makers of The Conners had thought carefully about how to write out Roseanne's character.
"You don't want to be flip about how you do this," Rasmussen told Variety in an interview last week.
"A lot of people cared about these characters and it's separate from whatever feelings they had about the person and her political views and the things she said."
The Conners stars original "Roseanne" actors John Goodman (Dan), Laurie Metcalf (Jackie) and Sara Gilbert (Darlene).
Australian Associated Press
