Kevin Smith Weighs In On ‘Roseanne’ Controversy

Filmmaker and comic book guru Kevin Smith praised ABC for swiftly responding to Tuesday's Roseanne Barr controversy, but says he would have fired the Roseanne star and kept the revival series' remaining cast.

Smith, a fan of both the sitcom's original run and its short-lived revival, appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience, where he told host Joe Rogan he learned of the controversy when wife Jennifer Schwalbach Smith woke him from a post-flight nap.

"My wife wakes me up and she goes, 'You've got a meeting, don't forget, it's 11:30. Oh, and Roseanne's been cancelled,'" Smith said.

"And I'm like, 'That's impossible.' Like, I was groggy, but I'm like, 'That's impossible, 20 million people are watching that show.' And she said, 'She tweeted something racist.'"

ABC acted "so f—ing incredibly fast," Smith said, adding "there was no prevarication [or] equivocation."

The revived sitcom was the number one show on television and pre-production was already underway on a second season, which would have aired this fall on ABC.

"It was nuts, like all of a sudden they're just like, 'We're done! We don't know her! Disavowed!' And I think it was so surprising because it's been a while since somebody did something even superficially moral," Smith said.

He continued: "I've read a lot of articles online where people are like 'Hey man, ABC didn't own the show, so of course they didn't have as much skin in the game, so it was easy for them to cancel it. Would they have cancelled it if they owned the show and dot dot dot?' You can make a bunch of kind of caveats but at the end of the day, something bad happened, and then the network reacted. F—k the network, a major company [Disney], a major corporation reacted and acted."

Disney-owned ABC quickly cancelled the short-lived Roseanne reboot on Tuesday after Barr made a racist tweet about former Barack Obama aide Valerie Jarrett.

Channing Dungey, President of ABC Entertainment, condemned Barr's comments, which she called "abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values."

Shortly after, Disney CEO Bob Iger responded to the decision, saying there was "only one thing" to do in the situation and calling the cancellation "the right thing."

Asked if the decision to immediately cancel the show was the right way to handle the situation, Smith answered, "I, personally, would have maybe fired her and kept everybody else."

Smith pointed to late '80s NBC sitcom Valerie, which became Valerie's Family: The Hogans and later The Hogan Family after the removal of star Valerie Harper, who was fired following a pay dispute. Her character, Valerie Hogan, was killed off in a car accident.

"I think you could tell equally compelling stories without [Roseanne]," Smith said.

"Honestly, the nine episodes that they've done this season, she really hasn't been the driving factor of the stories, it's been more about Darlene. That's who I felt bad for when this whole thing imploded, because I'm like, she put this show together — [star and executive producer] Sara Gilbert — and she was crushing on it, she was really good, showing off what a great actress she is. But now everybody's out of a job. I feel bad for John Goodman, I've worked with him before. And he was wonderful on the show. They could have sustained the show without her, I think."

On whether or not Barr can be forgiven for her comments, Smith said, "Can she be forgiven? Sure. Will she be forgiven? I don't know."