For Better Or Worse, The ‘Roseanne’ Reboot Will Be Shoving More Trump Into Your Living Room

Let’s get this out of the way — the Roseanne reboot is about Donald Trump. It doesn’t wink about today’s current political climate. It doesn’t make a single Trump or Clinton joke before moving on to family antics. Without giving away too many plot points, it’s a full-on deporables and pussy-hat comedy about how our current president is tearing apart households around America. No matter how you feel about that reality, one thing is for certain — the new Roseanne will make people talk.

In a weird way, that’s a compliment to the show as well as an unsurprising observation. From its first episode, Roseanne has always been proud of the way its made headlines by portraying a realistic working American family while tackling thorny plots about race, gender, and sexuality. Also, since the show’s (finally credited) creator and star Roseanne Barr is an outspoken Republican, it’s almost expected that the reboot of her iconic series would mention Trump and that her character would also share her political beliefs. However, even knowing the show’s revolutionary past and its star’s political leanings, it’s still a bit shocking to see how direct the new Roseanne is about politics. From Saturday Night Live and late night shows to lesser-known series like Baskets, there have been countless hours of comedies that have attempted to build a bridge between the political divide in America or at the very least understand it. Roseanne may be the first show that’s actually been able to capture the political poison tearing apart America’s families.

“We had a lot of discussion in the very beginning about all of our beliefs, about all the things we feel,” executive producer Bruce Helford said during a panel at the Television Critics Association’s 2018 winter tour. The question Helford answered, which focused on why it was important to portray the fictional Roseanne as a Trump supporter, was originally directed at Barr. She quickly passed the question to Helford — an early indicator of the political volleyball that would come to define the panel.

“What we really wanted to do was find a way for this to be a family which represents a full cross-section of values and beliefs,” Helford said. “And we wanted to get that debate going in a very honest way, a very real way. So whether you’re pro Trump or anti Trump, or pro Jill Stein or whatever, what we’re going for is getting that dialogue going in an honest way.”

“I always tried to have [Roseanne] be a true reflection of the society we live in. I feel like half the people voted for Trump and half didn’t, so it’s realistic,” Barr added.

Though she initially tried to avoid talking about politics during the panel, an odd move considering the subject matter of the reboot, Barr eventually addressed the Trump of it all at the panel’s increased prompting. “I’ve always been tempted to portray a realistic portrait of the American people and the working class people, and in fact it was working class people who elected Trump,” Barr said. “So I felt, yeah, that was very real, and it was something that needed to be discussed especially with polarization in the family and hating other people for the way they voted, which I feel is not American.”

Many shows have addressed Trump and our current political environment, sometimes in a praise-worthy way, sometimes not. However, there’s something about Roseanne‘s political conversation that feels relevant. Roseanne has always been a show for working middle American about working middle America. The series was routinely the most-watched show on television at the height of its popularity. For a period of American history, what Roseanne had to say mattered in a very large way. That quality is certainly going to be in the reboot, especially in its first episode.

Also according to Sara Gilbert, addressing the political divide in our country was baked into the DNA of the reboot from the beginning. “I was worried that people wouldn’t want to touch [Roseanne], that everybody was proud of it and wanted to leave it alone and not risk anything,” Gilbert said. “And then the other part [in making this] was this divide in our country and the fact that, you know, the working class have been underrepresented in our politics, on television, and this just felt like a wonderful time and opportunity to try and give some people a voice in this country.”

The reboot’s themes of political polarization even came to alter the tone of the panel. At one point. Barr was asked why her character, who was known for her acceptance and humanity, would support a candidate who was racist. Barr countered, saying that it was just the reporter’s opinion that Trump was xenophobic. She then added, “I’m not a Trump apologist, and there are a lot of things he’s said and done that I don’t agree with, like there’s probably a lot of things that Hillary Clinton done and said that you don’t agree with. Nobody is brainwashed into agreeing with 100 percent or what anyone says let alone a politician or a candidate.”

Barr even closed out the panel in a heated way, saying “I think it’s time to close ranks, and I’d really like to end hatriotism in this country.” In its own way, the volleying between extreme opinions and rational understanding that defined Roseanne‘s TCA 2018 appearance echoed both the spirit of the show and the deep-seated sense of political unease that has made many Americans disavow relatives they used to adore.

So yeah. The new Roseanne reboot, which is one of the biggest network premieres of the winter, is going to cause some conversations. Whether portraying the uncomfortable political cross-hairs happening in America’s families is a good or bad thing is a completely separate argument. But it’s there, and it’s going to come to all of our living rooms March 27.

Where to stream Roseanne