Sara Gilbert Quits Weeks After Roseanne Said She Ruined Her Life

Last month, we reported that Roseanne Barr had spoken out to slam her former “Roseanne” costar Sara Gilbert, saying that Gilbert had “destroyed” her life. Barr’s comments made headlines across the country with many of her fans jumping to her defense. Now, it appears that the stress of the situation may have gotten to Gilbert, as she just broke down on live television and quit one of her jobs.

Daily Mail reported that Gilbert shocked everyone on Tuesday when she quit CBS talk show “The Talk” after nine years. The announcement was particularly surprising given the fact that Gilbert is a co-creator and executive producer of the show.

“I’m nervous. This is hard to do and something… that I have been struggling with for a while and going back and forth, but I have decided that it’s time for me to leave the show,” Gilbert said.

She went on to say the while she wants to spend more time with her children, she also wants to have more time to work on her sitcom “The Conners,” the spinoff of “Roseanne.”

“My life was slightly out of balance and I wasn’t able to spend as much time with my three kids as I’d like or time for myself… and as I’ve continued on I’m starting to develop more things to produce and I’m having opportunities to act and I’m just feeling like I don’t know how I’m going to do it all,” Gilbert said. “I was looking at the next six months and just thinking, there’s no time.”

“The Conners” was green-lit by ABC following the cancellation of “Roseanne,” which was canceled within hours of Barr’s infamous tweet about Valerie Jarrett that resulted in her swift blacklisting by Hollywood. Though Gilbert had been a costar of Barr’s for decades, she was one of the first people to throw her under the bus on Twitter after her tweet was posted.

“She destroyed the show and my life with that tweet,” Barr said of Gilbert, going on to reference the movie Silence Of The Lambs when she added, “She will never get enough until she consumes my liver with a fine Chianti.”

It should be noted that it was Barr who gave Gilbert her start when she agreed to have her cast on “Roseanne” 31 years ago. It is also because of Barr that Gilbert even has a job to leave “The Talk” for. The only reason “The Conners” even exists is because Barr signed over all rights to her own beloved eponymous sitcom, just so members of the cast and crew could keep their jobs. Despite the fact that this was an incredibly selfless sacrifice on Barr’s part, Gilbert has never publicly thanked her in any way.

Though “The Conners” has been renewed for season 2 by ABC, the show’s ratings have not been nearly as good as the ratings of the “Roseanne” reboot. ABC likely wanted desperately to renew the show for a second season regardless of what the ratings were just so that they would not give Barr the satisfaction of canceling it so quickly, but they undoubtedly won’t be so merciful to “The Conners” should the ratings for the second season stay so low. Knowing this, Gilbert may have quit her job on “The Talk” so that she could devote as much time as possible to saving her sitcom, which has struggled without Barr at the helm.

Regardless of Gilbert’s reasoning for the quit, it’s time that she gives Barr the respect that she deserves. Instead of continuing to be complicit in Barr’s Hollywood blacklisting, Gilbert should show some loyalty to the woman who has given her so much by publicly forgiving her and encouraging the entertainment industry to hire Barr once again.