Two and a Half Men star Jon Cryer can identify with the cancellation of Roseanne due to Charlie Sheen’s meltdown on his show. Cryer experienced turmoil in his professional life when Sheen, the most popular star of the show, went off the rails and was fired in 2011. Ashton Kutcher eventually replaced Sheen, but the show was never the same. It ended up being canceled in 2015.
Roseanne’s cancellation was far more swift, however. The Roseanne revival produced incredible ratings, but it was immediately drowned when Barr tweeted what many thought was an incredibly racist statement about President Obama’s former senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. The same day, ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey released a statement that called Barr’s tweet abhorrent, repugnant, and inconsistent with ABC’s values – which is why they decided to cancel the show. Barr has insisted that, while her tweet was repulsive and ignorant, she had no idea that Jarrett was part African-American when she compared her to a monkey. And that was only the start of a series of controversial statements from Barr.
More: Roseanne Remorseful of Tweet That Got Her Show Cancelled in First Interview
In a new interview with Us Weekly, Jon Cryer says he knows some people involved with Roseanne, and although he doesn’t know her (or her beliefs) personally, he certainly understands a situation where the views and actions of just one star effects a lot of other people’s jobs. “So I have a lot of empathy for people in that situation. I get frustrated because this can be the most wonderful, happy job that you can have. You can bring so much positivity into people’s lives and it’s really frustrating when people throw that away,” he said, adding that relaunching a show is a tough job. Still, he wishes them well.
Although Cryer can certainly draw similarities from his experience and the Roseanne debacle, there are also a lot of important differences. Charlie Sheen certainly showed self-destructive behavior that led to his firing, but he didn’t destroy the whole image of Two and a Half Men. Television stations still ran the reruns, and even though the show wasn’t the same, it was given four more years of traction. At the time of Sheen’s breakdown, some even felt sorry for him while others humorously followed his meltdown like a train wreck. Roseanne Barr’s tweet yielded nothing but disgust, condemnation, and obituaries for the rest of her career. Things turned so bad that reruns of the original Roseanne were instantly removed from Viacom-owned stations.
While Cryer may wish The Conners spinoff well, the show will need a lot more than wishes to succeed. How is the show going to make people forget about Roseanne when she was, by far, the biggest star of the show (even bigger than Sheen was for Two and a Half Men)? Even if Roseanne is never mentioned, the stain she left is still going to be associated with the rest of the Conners, no matter how much they try and wipe it clean. Let’s hope audiences have just as much empathy as John Cryer does when The Conners debuts this fall.
