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Posts tagged as roseanne

Interview

Tom Arnold On Roseanne, Chuck Lorre And The Julia Louis-Dreyfus Parking Spot Incident

by | April 7th, 2011

Sometimes everything happens for a reason. Other times, everything happens because you're friends with Roseanne. In his new A.V. Club interview, Tom Arnold reminisces about the very many roles he's had during his decades-long career, and how it all began with that plum writer's gig on that insanely successful sitcom. "Your first job is on the number-one show, and you’re working around all these great writers and actors, and it’s a great place to learn, but it just seemed like my friend’s show," Arnold recalls, explaining that he took the job after a comedy club job in Minneapolis fell through. "She was putting together a show, I had [...]

Women in Comedy Week

Roseanne, Rhea, and the Rise of the Female Sitcom Star

by | January 28th, 2011

Women have proven they could be funny since the beginning of television; there were female comedy stars on shows like SNL, Lilly Tomlin on Laugh In, Carol Burnett. But the sitcom was different — the mothers, girlfriend and secretaries were secondary characters. Women were never the comedic force on a sitcom. They never had the punchline, they were the punchline. But all that changed in the 1980s.

I was born in 1982, and 7 years later I knew exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up. While most girls my age wanted to be doctors, teachers and princesses, I wanted to work in a bar. I [...]

Quicklink

Roseanne's Lifetime Reality Show About Her Hawaiian Farm Is Not a Joke

by | February 14th, 2011

This is real: "Lifetime Television has ordered 16 half-hour episodes of an all-new docu-series featuring Emmy® Award-winning actress, comedienne and best-selling author Roseanne Barr, marking her return to television as she takes on her newest endeavor, running her farm in Hawaii."

TV

How Roseanne Helped Make It OK to Be Gay on TV

by | December 22nd, 2010

Before there was Kurt Hummel, before there was Mitchell and Cameron, before there was Oscar Martinez, before there was Tara and Willow, before there was Will and Grace, and before there was Ellen, there was Roseanne Conner.

Roseanne, of course, isn’t gay, unlike every other name listed (minus Grace), but I’d argue that she did more for the ways homosexuals are portrayed on television than any single gay character or couple has done in the years following.

It’s tough remembering a time where gay characters on TV weren’t featured on issues of TV Guide, a time where even just the mention of a two women or, even [...]

Quicklink

The Roseanne Producer Who Resigned After Tom Arnold Tried to Strangle Him

by | January 31st, 2011

Today, Letters of Note has a fascinating piece of TV history relating to Roseanne: "On March 27th, 1990, with 34 episodes and a string of clashes with its main star under his belt, an exasperated Jeff Harris announced his resignation as executive producer on Roseanne by taking out a full-page ad in Daily Variety. On it was printed the following farewell letter. Breaking point was apparently reached when Roseanne Barr's new husband, Tom Arnold, furious that his power to edit scripts had been questioned, allegedly attempted to strangle Harris."

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