Roseanne Barr wraps eight-episode comedy ‘Meemaw’ eight years after ABC firing

Roseanne Barr, who was famously fired by Disney in 2018 over a tweet the studio dubbed “abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values,” just wrapped production on an eight-episode family comedy called “Meemaw,” Page Six Hollywood had exclusively learned. 

The series shot in Austin, Texas, features plenty of comedy world notables including Randy Quaid, Drea de Matteo, Omar Gooding and Doug Jones — as well as guest appearances from Jon Lovitz, Tony Hinchcliffe and Kim Congdon.

“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 preppers in Texas” who is on a quest to “throw her granddaughter the most fantastic bat mitzvah Texas has ever seen.”

She adds, “I thought now would be a great time for people to actually hear from a Jew.” Mo’Nique, the Oscar-winning “Precious” star who remains friends with Barr, discovered Indy Bugg, a tween Instagram sensation 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.”

All that might make liberals’ heads explode considering that Barr became a Hollywood pariah thanks to a 2018 tweet that referred to former Michelle Obama aide Valerie Jarrett as the offspring of the “Muslim Brotherhood & Planet of the Apes” in a Twitter reply. At the time, she apologized to Jarrett and deleted her Twitter account. (Barr says she didn’t know then that Jarrett is Black.)

But Disney moved quickly to fire its biggest TV star just as the “Roseanne” revival had become a ratings juggernaut for ABC, finishing its first season as the No. 1 scripted primetime TV show in the 18-49 age demographic. Her ouster also arrived at the height of cancel culture, and the Emmy winner was immediately dropped by her longtime agents at ICM as well. (The show was reworked as “The Conners.”)

Over the ensuing years, the former ratings queen found some supporters. Bill Maher brought her on as a guest on his “Club Random” podcast. So she then began writing a series with “Roseanne” and “Arli$$” alum Allan Stephan. The show centered on a rural Alabama farmer dabbling in the cannabis and magic mushroom trade. 

At the time, she told Variety that she was writing the script for a Coen brothers-esque family comedy and would soon shop it.

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

But she scrapped that plotline and brought in longtime Adam Sandler collaborator Allen Covert as a third writer, and the trio crafted her current show, “Meemaw,” a “semi-autobiographical series about a woman who hails from a very liberal East Coast Jewish family,” and who gets disinherited and must live the lower-class dream in Texas. “It’s now more John Waters,” she notes of the pivot. 

Barr was able to raise enough money from private investors to mount a fully union production. She began quietly shooting it in Austin in November 2025.

We asked Barr if Elon Musk, whose Tesla and SpaceX are based in Austin, put money into “Meemaw.” After all, Musk famously pledged to back X users who faced dismissals stemming from posts on free speech grounds.

“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.’” (We reached out to Musk but didn’t hear back.)

Perhaps Musk miscalculated. Barr has a long and proven track record for making what American audiences want, often before the industry recognizes it.

When “Roseanne” premiered in 1988, the sitcom landscape was dominated by polished, aspirational versions of American family life. Barr recognized that millions wanted to see something different: a working-class family that was messy, funny, imperfect and familiar. The show following the Conner family quickly became No. 1 on the small screen.

Now, Barr sees a further rupture between what audiences want and what much of the entertainment industry is willing to make. As such, she’s betting that audiences are sick of sanitized humor and political correctness.

Quaid plays her husband, and Barr warns that there are plenty of “romantic, passionate and overwhelming love scenes” between the pair.

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

Speaking of OnlyFans, de Matteo took time away from her very lucrative side hustle on the racy platform to portray Barr’s daughter. The Emmy-winning “Sopranos” star cryptically told us during her London Fashion Week debut that she “just did a TV show … with everyone’s favorite mom.”

As for Hinchcliffe, who faced cancellation calls in 2024 after he jokingly publicly referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage,” he appears in “Meemaw”… as Satan. (UTA and Brillstein Entertainment Partners refused to part ways with the comedian despite pressure, and continue to rep him.)

Rounding out the family is Gooding (brother of Cuba Gooding Jr.), who plays Barr’s son in law. Back in the day, Gooding appeared on Barr’s talk show that ended in 2000.

“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 feels certain that “Meemaw” is for everyone — and neither the right nor the left get off easy.

“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.”