Roseanne (née Roseanne Barr, formerly Roseanne Arnold) is best known as the star of the situation comedy Roseanne, for several years the most highly rated program on American television and the centerpiece of ABC comedy programming. She was also one of the more controversial and outspoken television stars of the 1980s and 1990s. Her public statements, appearances on celebrity interview shows, and feature articles about her life in magazines and tabloid newspapers have often overshadowed her work as an actress and comedian.

When Roseanne created the lead character for the series Roseanne, it was based on her own comic persona, a brash, loud-mouthed, working-class mother and wife who jokes and mocks the unfairness of her situation and who is especially blunt about her views of men and sexism. First revealed to a national television audience in the mid-1980s in her stand-up routines on such late-night programs as The Tonight Show and in two HBO specials, Roseanne’s humor aggressively attacks whomever and whatever would denigrate fat, poor women: husbands, family and friends, the media, or government welfare policies. She has often stated that her life experiences were the basis for the TV character and her comedy. Critics have described the persona as a classic example of the “unruly” woman who challenges gender and class stereotypes in her performances.

Roseanne’s published self-disclosures, in her two autobiographies, provide a detailed public record of her life. She grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, in a working-class Jewish family she has defined as “dysfunctional,” a description that includes her assertions of having been sexually molested by family members. A high-school dropout, she reports getting married while still in her teens in order to get away from her family. She worked as a waitress, and, according to People Weekly magazine, began her comedy by being rude to her customers. Her career as a stand-up comic began in Denver, Colorado, where her club appearances gained a following among the local feminist and gay communities. She toured nationally on the comedy club circuit and made well-received appearances on late-night talk shows before starring in her own comedy specials on HBO. In 1986, the Carsey-Werner Company approached her with a proposal for developing a situation comedy based on her stand-up routines. The show would be an antidote to the upper-middle-class wholesomeness of the previous Carsey-Werner hit, The Cosby Show. The popularity of her sitcom Roseanne, which aired from 1988 to 1997, broadened the audience for Roseanne as a public persona and greatly increased her power within show business (she has been compared to Lucille Ball in this regard).

There have been missteps, however. One highly publicized gaffe was Roseanne’s off-key performance of the national anthem at a professional baseball game, a performance that ended with a crude gesture. Still, the resulting flurry of outraged criticism from public officials and in the media did not diminish the popularity of the Roseanne show. In another exercise of industry clout, Roseanne threatened to move her sitcom to a different network when ABC decided to cancel the low-rated The Jackie Thomas Show, which starred her then-husband Tom Arnold. The threat created real jitters among network executives until it was discovered that Roseanne did not own the rights to the show (only Carsey-Werner could make such a decision). Roseanne also pushed boundaries by having her series take a number of risks by raising issues of gender, homosexuality, and family dysfunction. The forthrightness of these dramatic moments is rare in prime-time sitcoms. Despite such frankness, the series continued to appeal to a wide segment of the viewing audience during its nine-year run.

The show’s treatment of such charged issues was consistent with Roseanne’s stated political and social views. While she did not write the scripts (for a time, Arnold was heavily involved in writing), Roseanne retained a good deal of artistic control. Many of the plots drew on aspects of her life prior to her success or referred to contemporaneous events in her “real” life. Other episodes included entire dialogues proposed by Roseanne to address specific themes or issues. The show occasionally strayed from the sitcom formula of neatly tying up all the plotlines by the end of the episode. As Kathleen Rowe notes, one year saw Darlene (Sara Gilbert), the younger daughter character, going through an early adolescent depression that continued for the entire season.

Although the program continued to be extremely popular as it grew older, with some critics arguing that later seasons improved over earlier ones, Roseanne herself faced greater media exposure for details of her personal life (cosmetic surgery, divorce, remarriage, pregnancy) than for her political views or her career as an actor. In almost every case, she seemed able to turn such public discussions into more authority and control within the media industries. After the sitcom concluded, however, Roseanne’s next major television venture, a talk show titled The Roseanne Show, suggested that there were limits to her power; afflicted with poor ratings and reviews, the syndicated series was canceled after less than two years on the air.

In 2003, Roseanne contributed to the reality television trend with The Real Roseanne Show, a “behind-the-scenes” look at another television show she was working on, a cooking and lifestyle series entitled Domestic Goddess. The Real Roseanne Show followed the development of Domestic Goddess in the studio, as well as Roseanne’s personal life during the production, with some segments filmed in her home. However, the premiere of Domestic Goddess was delayed when Roseanne had to undergo a hysterectomy. Under these circumstances, The Real Roseanne Show, already widely panned by critics and plagued with low ratings, was forced to suspend production after only two weeks on the air.