Tom Arnold says ex-wife Roseanne wanted her show to be canceled, blames Trump for encouraging her
Tom Arnold is not at all surprised that his ex-wife Roseanne Barr lost her ABC show revival and feels that it was only a matter of time before all hell broke loose. ABC canceled 'Roseanne' reboot following racist tweets from the actress. However, her 59-year-old ex-husband Tom Arnold says that he was not at all surprised by the news.
In an appearance on AC360 with Anderson Cooper, Arnold revealed, "I was not surprised by what went down and that the show was canceled. I had a feeling this would happen when there was news of a reboot." Arnold was also a former writer on the original run of 'Roseanne' and claims that she knew exactly what she was doing.
As reported by Hollywood Reporter, Tom spoke about the show's cancelation and said, "It had to happen. And I am going to tell you the truth, she wanted it to happen, if you saw how her tweets escalated this weekend. If it hadn’t happened yesterday, this season would have been so awful for everyone every day because she would have felt like she was [being] taken advantage [of], just like when I left the show."
Arnold went on to add that, during the time of the production of revival, he suggested that someone should have kept Barr away from her phone. "ABC lost maybe $1 billion from this. This show was grinding out money hand-over-fist and they lost it all because somebody didn’t say, 'Get that phone out of her hand,'" he said.
"She’s not going to go on TV and say these things. But you put that phone in her hand and she is a loose cannon," he continued. "I said, look, someone has got to tell her that Donald Trump doesn't carry his own phone. He may say the tweet, but someone is typing it in." Barr needed a "shield," he says. "She needed someone to wrangle her in and take her phone."
When Arnold was informed that Barr downright refused to give up her phone, he had a different suggestion to offer. He attempted to draft a statement for her that said that she was going to spend less time on Twitter.
"I wrote a whole thing for her a month ago and sent it over [to the crew] that said, 'I am going to take a step back, it was fun at first, but now I can see how much negativity there is out there and people are getting hurt and I am going to take a step back and I am hoping my fans will too,'" Arnold said. "And then, if her crazy tweets came out, she could point to that and say, 'But I have taken a step back.'"
Arnold was also baffled by his ex-wife's loyalty to Donald Trump who called Barr to congratulate her on her reboot before it was canceled. "She's known Trump for 30 years, like I have. She knows he's an asshole. She is so locked in with Trump she is unable to have any introspection. It is a weird thing," he shared.
"It has been 24 years so I don't know that I know who Roseanne is. Everyone has always been scared shitless of her. She is a fucking asshole, but so am I. No one ever stood up to her like I did," he continued.