Eight years after the controversial and widely-derided tweet from comedian Roseanne Barr that led to the cancellation of Roseanne, one of its lead stars is clearing the air on his thoughts.
Michael Fishman, now 44, played the youngest of the Conner children, D.J. Conner, for the entirety of the original series’ 10-season run, plus the first four seasons of spin-off show The Conners.
As the story goes, the hit sitcom Roseanne ended in 1997 with a ninth season that was critically panned primarily for its twist ending that retconned much of the previous show. As a result, it was revived in 2018 for a 10th season, which premiered to strong reviews and ratings.
However, that same year, Roseanne herself, now 73, made a tweet about former senior Obama administration advisor Valerie Jarrett that was strongly condemned and deemed racist and Islamophobic, leading to the swift cancellation of the Roseanne revival and a greenlight instead for The Conners, which didn’t include the namesake star.
In a new video shared on Instagram, which you can watch above, Michael addressed the comments he still receives to this day stating that ABC and the world wanted to “backstab Roseanne,” and clarified his own thoughts on why the show was “rightfully cancelled.”
The former child star dubbed the comments “ignorant and inaccurate,” and noted that while he still has love for the actress, he stood by her notion of calling the tweet “indefensible.”
© Getty Images“Humanity crumbles when justify dehumanization and stay silent to suffering, inequality, exclusion, and oppression,” he captioned his post. “We can do better. I was shaped by the show I grew up on. Now I am building bigger. Words have consequences.”
What has Roseanne star Michael Fishman been up to since?
While on the sitcom, Michael took intermittent acting jobs that mostly included one-episode stints in shows like The Jackie Thomas Show, Hey Arnold!, and Seinfeld.
© Getty ImagesWhen the original show’s run ended, he made a cameo in the Steven Spielberg movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and made several appearances on The Roseanne Show in 1999 as the host’s sidekick.
He appeared in the 2016 film Undrafted and starred in The Conners until 2022. He now hosts the podcast A Lighthouse in the Dark, where he discusses “resilience, mental wellness, healing, grief, purpose, and the light we find through human connection.”
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