Big Bang Theory creator Chuck Lorre has reflected on his time working for Roseanne Barr
Chuck Lorre has claimed Roseanne Barr “hated” her sitcom’s writers.
Before the 73-year-old TV legend created the likes of The Big Bang Theory and Two And A Half Men, he worked as an up-and-coming writer on 1980s comedy Roseanne, which he described as a brutal experience.
Appearing on the Dinner’s On Me podcast, he said: “I navigated because I’d had, I don’t know, 15, 20 years of poverty and health issues and all sorts of stuff, and I was not going to go back.
“Under no circumstances was I going to go back to scrambling to pay the rent. That is why I put up with it.
“Sixty, 70-hour weeks every week. And it was malice. It was absolute.”
Chuck claimed that Roseanne, 73, resented the idea of other people writing for her after she started her career as a stand-up comedian and based the character of Roseanne Conner on herself.
He added: “[She] hated that there were writers. Fundamentally hated that other people wrote words that she would say.
“She was a stand-up comedian. She made herself a superstar based on her words, her writing. Then transition to a television show where [you] can’t do it alone. It’s impossible. That transition was not going to happen.”
He worked on the show for just two seasons before creating his first sitcom, Frannie’s Turn, which was axed before its first full season could air.
Chuck, whose recent Big Bang Theory spinoff Stuart Fails To Save The Universe has been renewed for a second season, described the way Roseanne worked as a sitcom as “flawed”.
He said: “There was this built-in animosity between Rosie and the writing staff, any writing staff. Didn’t matter if I was on it or anybody.
“It was the premise of other people putting words in a stand-up comedian’s mouth. It’s fundamentally flawed. There’s very few comics that can do that.”
In 2011 blog post, Roseanne claimed she “fired” Chuck from her show, added that his “lines could choke a f****** horse, and render any actor who recites them stone cold soul dead”.
The following year, he told the Archive of American Television: “She had a pretty good instinct for glibness.
“She wanted to write an honest comedy. You know, about what real families say and do. How they treat each other.
“The glibness got burned out of you really quickly or you were gone.”
Chuck Lorre claims Rosanne Barr ‘hated’ her show’s writers: ‘It was malice’
