(JTA) — Roseanne Barr said she is planning to take a trip to Israel.
She told Rabbi Shmuley Boteach in a new appearance on his podcast that she is not planning to watch the “Roseanne” spinoff titled “The Conners,” which brings together the entire former cast except for her iconic character, when it premiers on October 16.
“I have an opportunity to go to Israel for a few months and study with my favorite teachers over there, and that’s where I’m going to go and probably move somewhere there and study with my favorite teachers,” she said during the podcast, Deadline Hollywood reported. “I have saved a few pennies and I’m so lucky I can go.
She said that she is going to go and study “with any rabbi that I can ask to teach me.” She also said: “It’s my great joy and privilege to be a Jewish woman.”
The interview comes days after John Goodman, the television husband of star Roseanne Barr, confirmed in an interview with the London-based The Times that Roseanne will be killed off for the spinoff.
Rosanne told Boteach that she will neither “curse it or bless” the spinoff show.
“That’s what I gotta do… I have some mental health issues of depression and stuff. I got to stay in the middle or I’ll go dark and I don’t want to go dark again,” she said.
She also said that she is working on a new sitcom.
Roseanne last appeared on the rabbi’s podcast two days after ABC canceled her popular show, a reboot of her late 1980s sitcom, over a tweet mocking Valerie Jarrett, a former adviser to President Barack Obama and an African-American woman. The tweet said the “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.” The actress later deleted the tweet and issued an apology, saying she had made “a bad joke about her politics and her looks.”
Boteach did not release the podcast right away, saying “I want to give her space to reflect on the recent events and releasing the recording is a decision she will make at the appropriate time.” He later released the podcast, a day after the announcement of plans to launch “The Connors.”
Boteach has had a 20-year friendship with Barr, who is Jewish.
