Back in the 1990s heyday of her hit sitcom “Roseanne,” comedian Roseanne Barr‘s tumultous marriage to Tom Arnold and their subsequent nasty divorce generated a steady stream of tabloid headlines.
Now, the ex-spouses who spent years sniping at each other in the press have experienced a distinctive thaw in what had been a chilly relationship.
It all came about when Arnold came forward to defend Barr over some allegations laid out in a new book by sitcom mogul Chuck Lorre.
‘She Only Liked the Funny Writers’
Lorre — whose voluminous roster of hit sitcoms ranges from “Two and a Half Men” to “The Big Bang Theory” and its recent spinoff “Stuart Fails to Save the Universe” — recently published his memoir, “Sitcom: A Memoir.”
In the book, Lorre details his time as a writer on “Roseanne,” writing that Barr “hated that there were writers. Fundamentally hated that other people wrote words that she would say.” Because Barr’s sitcom character was an extension of her standup comedy act and she’d “created the character Roseanne Conner, largely based on herself,” Lorre wrote that she resented the show’s writers.
Arnold, who’d been a writer and performer on “Roseanne,” sprang to Barr’s defence when interviewed for Entertainment Weekly. “Now, a couple things. One, you know, he’s got Roseanne all figured out,” Arnold quipped sarcastically.
“I hate to speak for her, but it’s not that she didn’t like writers,” he added. “She only liked the funny writers. That’s really the truth.”
As Arnold recalled, when Lorre joined the “Roseanne” writing staff as head writer, “he wanted to be the guy that communicated with Roseanne. So he’d keep those writers up all night. I said, ‘You can’t do that anymore. There’s nothing good that’s coming out of that, Chuck. There’s nothing good. If you can’t figure it out by 10:30, I mean, these people have families.’”
Arnold also claimed that Lorre was “wound so tightly. So I think if you’re wound super tight in a writing room, people are going to make fun of you. That’s what they do.” In fact, Arnold recalled that “the other writers that worked with him said that, behind his back he was called Chuckles because he never laughed.”
‘Hell Finally Froze Over Today’
Barr referenced Arnold’s remarks about Lorre when she was subsequently interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter about her self-financed TV comeback attempt, “Meemaw.”
“Unbelievably — I don’t think you’ll hear me say this often — but Tom Arnold is telling the truth for once,” Barr told the outlet.
“Talk about the paradigm switch here. Tom Arnold is defending me. I have to thank him for that. That’s the first time he’s done something right by me in his [expletive] life. Thanks, Tom.”
Arnold responded to his ex-wife’s shoutout in a social media post.
“Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up,” he wrote on Instagram. “33 years ago I predicted I would do something so cool my 1st X Wife Roseanne would be forced to say something almost nice about me. Hell finally froze over today.”
Comments
Tom Arnold Jokes About Ex-Wife Roseanne Barr Thanking Him For Coming to Her Defense: ‘Hell Finally Froze Over’