Roseanne Barr Returning To TV Alongside Star-Studded Cast

Roseanne Barr is officially plotting her television comeback, eight years after Hollywood showed her the door.

The comedian has wrapped production on an eight-episode family comedy titled “Meemaw,” filmed in Austin, Texas, with a cast that includes Randy Quaid, Drea de Matteo, Omar Gooding and Doug Jones.

Jon Lovitz, Tony Hinchcliffe and Kim Congdon are also set to make guest appearances in the series.

Barr, whose smash-hit sitcom “Roseanne” became a television phenomenon before her 2018 firing, is billing the new project as another family comedy willing to go places mainstream Hollywood often will not.

“It’s every bit as revolutionary as ‘The Roseanne Show,’ if not more, and my work has improved with time,” Barr tells us. “I want everybody who disagrees in a family to sit in the same room and just laugh and go, ‘Yeah, maybe I was an a—hole that time. Well, you were an a—hole this time. Oh, we’re all a—holes. Let’s get a beer.”

Barr plays the matriarch of a mixed-race family of Texas preppers who sets out to throw her granddaughter an over-the-top bat mitzvah.

She also sees the series as an opportunity to bring her Jewish background directly into the story.
She adds, “I thought now would be a great time for people to actually hear from a Jew.”

Oscar winner Mo’Nique helped Barr find young Instagram personality Indy Bugg, who plays Barr’s granddaughter.

“Mo’Nique calls up, ‘Check this girl out. She not only looks like you, but she acts just like you, too,” Barr recalls. “She was only 12, and I about fell over that I was able to get her. She’s such a star. You’ll see it in the first episode, in her first scene.”

The new series marks a major return for Barr after one of Hollywood’s most dramatic cancellations.

Roseanne Barr just wrapped a new sitcom called Meemaw, and Hollywood didn’t give it to her. She made it herself. That’s resilience, and a comeback worth celebrating. Barr is a legend for her comedic fortitude and for her refusal to go down quietly. This proves it.

Disney fired Barr in 2018 over a post and pulled the revival of Roseanne while it was the top scripted show on television. Eight years later she raised the money, hired a union crew, and shot eight episodes of her new show in Austin. In Meemaw, she plays a prepper grandmother in Texas trying to throw her granddaughter a bat mitzvah. Randy Quaid plays her husband. Drea de Matteo plays her daughter.

She says the jokes go both ways politically. She wrote some for her woke daughters, and some about Republicans that the left will like. Good. That’s the formula people actually watched her for. The family on the show doesn’t only criticize outward. It laughs at itself too.

Cancel culture took the network show from Barr. It didn’t take her audience. Meemaw is the proof, and its success will show what audiences actually care about. The comeback is also proof of what the country still rewards. You can get fired for a post and still make a new show yourself.

— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) October 8, 2026

ABC revived “Roseanne” in 2018 to blockbuster ratings, with the sitcom finishing its first season as the top scripted primetime series among adults ages 18 to 49.

But Disney fired Barr after she posted a social media message about former Obama administration adviser Valerie Jarrett that the company called offensive. Barr apologized and deleted her Twitter account.

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The show was subsequently retooled without her as “The Conners.”

In the years that followed, Barr remained largely outside the Hollywood mainstream while continuing stand-up comedy, podcasting and other projects.

She eventually began developing a new series with longtime collaborator Allan Stephan before bringing Adam Sandler collaborator Allen Covert into the writing team.

An earlier concept centered on a rural Alabama farmer involved with cannabis and psychedelic mushrooms, but Barr and the writers scrapped that version.

The resulting “Meemaw” became a semi-autobiographical comedy about a woman from a liberal East Coast Jewish family who is disinherited and forced to rebuild her life in Texas.

“It’s now more John Waters,” she notes of the pivot.

Barr raised money from private investors and mounted the project as a fully union production, quietly beginning filming in Texas in late 2025.

She previously made clear that she was willing to bypass the traditional Hollywood system entirely if necessary.

“If Hollywood doesn’t buy it, then I’m just gonna make it myself,” she said at the time.

That is essentially what she did.

Quaid plays Barr’s husband, while de Matteo portrays her daughter and Gooding plays her son-in-law.

Barr also joked that the show includes plenty of romance between her character and Quaid’s.

“The extras are gonna be released on OnlyFans,” she says before quickly adding, “I’m kidding.”

Hinchcliffe appears in a particularly unusual role: Satan.

The comedian himself weathered calls for cancellation in 2024 after a controversial joke about Puerto Rico but remained represented by his talent agencies.

Barr said some members of her cast also faced questions about working with her.

“He was getting s—t for [doing ‘Meemaw’],” Barr says. “Anyone who asked him why he would work with such a horrible person as myself, he said, ‘Comedy is king.’ It takes somebody who really has faith in their talent to go against the Hollywood gatekeepers, you know.”

Barr even tried unsuccessfully to get Elon Musk involved financially.

“He wouldn’t call me back,” she says. “Like, ‘Can I get some assistance over here, man? I got fired for a text that was up for two hours that nobody saw.’”

Barr’s original sitcom became a television powerhouse beginning in 1988 by focusing on a working-class American family rather than the polished households common on network television at the time.

With “Meemaw,” she is once again betting that audiences want a family comedy that is messy, blunt and unafraid of offending somebody.

And Barr says nobody is safe from the punchlines.

“My daughters are super woke and of course I love them, so I put in jokes for them, too, like I did on ‘Roseanne,’” she says. “I make fun of everybody ’cause everybody deserves to be made fun of who’s in power. So, I’ve got some great jokes about Republicans that the lefties are gonna love. I’m an equal opportunity destroyer.”

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