Whitney Cummings quit ‘Roseanne’ over Roseanne Barr’s tweets.
The 36-year-old comedian and producer has revealed that she stepped down as showrunner of the sitcom – which was axed by ABC in May 2018 after Roseanne likened former political advisor Valerie Jarrett to an "ape" on Twitter – as she felt it as "clear" the comedian would eventually say something problematic on social media.
Speaking on the Daily Beast’s ‘The Last Laugh’ podcast, she said: "No it was clear to me that something was gonna [happen]. I wanted her to get off Twitter. I felt like it was going to come to a head. It was like whack-a-mole. I also had not seen, there were tweets from years ago that weren’t great, I hadn’t seen those.
"I just thought we were all singing up to hold up a mirror to what was going on and hopefully do a funny healing and nostalgic show. It had the potential to be really healing and to be able to start interesting conversations."
The ‘2 Broke Girls’ writer branded the incident "traumatising" and explained that the decision to axe the show was even more " heartbreaking and surreal" as she’d been such a fan of the sitcom growing up.
She said:"I grew up watching ‘Roseanne’, I loved it. I grew up poor and that was the first show that looked like my house. It was the first show that didn’t make me feel bad about myself.
"I was a very big fan of hers so the whole thing has been heartbreaking and surreal when people ask me I forget about it …it was so traumatising."
And asked if ABC made the right decision when it axed ‘Roseanne’, she said: "Yeah, I think it was. It’s just a shame. I’m still too shocked and confused to even know what to even think. It’s just wildly unfortunate."