Roseanne Barr is no stranger to the ebbs and flows of Hollywood stardom.
In 2018, ABC canceled the revival of the award-winning actress’ hit sitcom, “Roseanne,” after a social media post she published about a former adviser to the Obama administration was deemed racist, sparking public outrage. The comedian made her comeback five years later, returning to the limelight with the release of her 2023 comedy special “Cancel This!”
“When I was really little, I saw myself doing something that was gonna be, have good consequences to it,” she explained.
The self-proclaimed “citizen journalist” launched her own podcast, “The Roseanne Barr Podcast,” in the summer of 2023. On her show, Ms. Barr regularly discusses some of the top problems facing Americans today.
“This week I was like, ‘Hey, this is like when you were little, and now you’re doing it,’” she continued. “I do feel like God puts me where he wants me.”
Conversations With God
Raised in an Orthodox Jewish home in Salt Lake City, Utah—a city widely affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—the actress said her faith has always been an important part of her life.“Since I was 3 years old ... I’ve had a conversation going with God,” she said. “You know how little kids have an imaginary friend? Well, mine was God,” she said, recalling once asking God why he allowed people to suffer.
“I said, ‘How come you—you could solve every problem on Earth. Alls you gotta do is just wiggle your little finger and you could stop all these problems. Why can’t you do that?’” she queried, noting that she was suffering at the time.
“And He said to me, ‘cause I don’t have fingers, Roseanne. Oh, but you do,’” she recalled. “And He said, ‘And you should be very proud of that opposable thumb that I put on that hand of yours because now you can really get busy helping a lot of people and trying to make things right.’”
Ms. Barr remarked: “He always gave me the answer that I knew God would give me.”
Although her upbringing instilled in her a deep faith in God, Ms. Barr admitted that she didn’t have an “average” childhood growing up. However, she expressed her gratitude nonetheless.
‘Pray With Me’
During the far-reaching interview, Ms. Barr also touched upon a host of other issues, from advocating for sexual abstinence outside of marriage to criticizing artificial intelligence in movies.She also addressed the blowback that many people faced for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine.
“The heart of America, we keep being denied to see the real Americans—the heroes of America,” she said. “Those nurses and doctors that, you know, refused to go along; those brave people in our armed forces who were kicked out because they, they understood that no government, least of all this one, has the right to force untested drugs on a captive population.”
“It’s so horrible,” she said. “I don’t know if this is the end of the world. It looks like it to me.”
However, the actress noted that a silver lining could be found in God.
“Here’s the good news,” she said. “In the Torah, it says that 99 percent of this world is just physical. And it’s that 1 percent that matters. So I think that 1 percent is the one they can’t factor in ‘cause they don’t know what it is ... but we do,” she explained.
“And that’s the 1 percent that is where all wars are decided and won and lost—that’s God,” she said, encouraging others to join her in prayer.
“I just invite people to pray with me and pray themselves in their own words. Not by rote, not by prayers they’ve already heard, but in their own words,” she said.
“Because I know we do have the power of spirit together to make this all stop and change it,” she continued. “I know we can do it. I just wish other people would know that, too.”
