TV Legend Says Roseanne ‘Fundamentally Hated’ the Writers on Her Show: ‘It Was Malice’

In the late 1980s, long before Chuck Lorre created The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men and Mom, he landed an early job writing for one of television’s biggest hits: Roseanne.

But Lorre, 73, says working on the ABC sitcom starring Roseanne Barr was anything but easy.

During the Oct. 6 episode of Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s Dinner’s on Me podcast, Lorre reflected on his time working on Roseanne and explained why he was willing to endure an extraordinarily demanding environment so early in his television career.

Ferguson brought up the considerable “folklore” surrounding Roseanne and the stories that have emerged over the years about how difficult things could be behind the scenes.

Lorre said his experiences before getting the job played a major role in how he handled it.

“I navigated them because I’d had, I don’t know, 15, 20 years of poverty and health issues and all sorts of stuff,” Lorre said. “And I was not going to go back.”

The prolific producer said that “under no circumstances” did he want to return to struggling to pay his rent or worrying about being able to take his child to the doctor.

“I think my life prior to that is why I put up with it,” he continued, recalling working “60, 70 hour weeks every week.”

“And it was malice,” Lorre said.

According to Lorre, much of the difficulty stemmed from Barr’s relationship with the show’s writers.

“Roseanne hated that there were writers, fundamentally hated that other people wrote words that she would say,” he said.

Lorre attributed some of that friction to Barr’s background as a stand-up comedian. Before Roseanne premiered in 1988, Barr had built her career performing her own material and became known for her “domestic goddess” comedy persona.

“She made herself a superstar based on her words, her writing,” Lorre explained.

Moving from stand-up to a weekly television series required a different kind of collaboration, however, and Lorre said that transition created tension.

“You can’t do it alone. It’s impossible,” he said. “That transition was not going to happen.”

Lorre described a “built-in animosity” between Barr and the writing staff that wasn’t limited to any particular group of writers.

“Didn’t matter if I was on it or anybody,” he said. “It was the premise of other people putting words in a stand-up comedian’s mouth.”

Lorre ultimately worked on two seasons of Roseanne before going on to become one of the most successful sitcom creators in television history.

His credits would eventually include Dharma & Greg, Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, Mike & Molly, Mom, Young Sheldon and The Kominsky Method.

More than three decades later, his experience on Roseanne remains part of the story of how that career began.

Lorre’s new memoir “Sitcom” is scheduled to be released Tuesday, Oct. 13.

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