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Roseanne Barr Speaks Out About ABC Ouster In Emotional Interview

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Just one day after being fired from her namesake ABC show, actress Roseanne Barr gave an emotional audio interview to her friend and spiritual adviser, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, which was released via Soundcloud on Sunday.

In the interview, Barr lamented the tweet that, out of her “own ignorance,” got her fired, though she insisted she “didn’t mean it the way they’re saying I meant it.”

“I know your heart and I know you have great love in your heart, and I know what your values are,” said Shmuley before asking Barr about the tweet that got her in so much trouble. “So how do you write something that was in contravention of that value system?”

“It’s really hard to say this but, I didn’t mean what they think I meant,” said Barr, referring to her tweet in May that likened Obama staffer Valerie Jarrett to the lovechild of the Muslim Brotherhood and “Planet of the Apes.” “And that’s what’s so painful. But I have to face that it hurt people. When you hurt people even unwillingly there’s no excuse.”

Barr then apologized “to anyone who thought, or felt offended and who thought that I meant something that I, in fact, did not mean to my own ignorance. There’s no excuse for that ignorance, but I didn’t mean it the way they’re saying I meant it. And that’s really weird too because if I don’t speak for myself, who will speak for me.”

The implication that she was somehow a racist for one tweet obviously disturbed the former Roseanne star, who broke down before pointing to the diversity in her own family as proof of the accusation’s falsity. (RELATED: ABC To Air New Show Similar To ‘Roseanne’)

“I have black children in my family. I can’t, I can’t let ‘em say these things about that, after 30 years of my putting my family and my health and my livelihood at risk to stand up for people. I’m a lot of things, I’m a loud mouth and all that stuff. But I’m not stupid, for God’s sake and I never would have wittingly called any black person a monkey. I just wouldn’t do that. I didn’t do that. And if people think that I did that it just kills me. I didn’t do that.”

“I horribly regret it,” Barr said of her tweet, insisting later she thought Jarrett was white. “Are you kidding? I lost everything, and I regretted it before I lost everything. And I said to God, ‘I am willing to accept whatever consequences this brings because I know I’ve done wrong. I’m going to accept what the consequences are,’ and I do, and I have. But they don’t ever stop. They don’t accept my apology, or explanation. And I’ve made myself a hate magnet. And as a Jew, it’s just horrible. It’s horrible.”

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