A former sitcom star is firing back at his TV mother after she tore into him in a profanity-laced podcast rant.
Michael Fishman, 44, who played D.J. Conner on Roseanne and its spinoff The Conners, dismissed Roseanne Barr’s comments as “obvious lies and name-calling” in a lengthy Instagram video posted Thursday, two days after Barr’s comments began circulating online.
Fishman thanked Barr, who told him to “shut the f--- up” and “stay f---ed” in the clip, for “finally admitting the public truth”—that he reached out to her the morning after the racist tweets that got the original Roseanne reboot canceled in 2018. He said he “vehemently condemned” the tweets at the time but never abandoned her.
“I gave you respect and asked for clarity. I never turned my back. I showed you compassion even though I vehemently disagreed with you,” he said.
Fishman called Barr’s rant “a glimpse into the darker side of [his] childhood” and teased he might soon share “a fuller picture” of his time on the show. He also requested “a retraction or an apology maybe” from Barr, 73, while insisting he’d meet her “rage, hate and alienation” with “the capacity of [his] heart.”
“I don’t have to take the hook of the fight just because people lashed out,” he said, adding that he’s set “healthy boundaries” with the actress.
Barr’s blistering comments, delivered Tuesday, branded her former co-star a “f---ing worm,” a “brainwashed bigot” and a “f---ing putz” — retaliation, it seems, for Fishman previously calling her firing “rightful” given her tweets were “damag[ing] and dehumanizing.”
Barr’s son, Jake Pentland, piled on separately, telling TMZ that Fishman “prevented her from publicly defending herself” and “conspired” to take the revival away from her.
Barr’s rep did not immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment.
