“He really understands ratings and how they measure things.”
President Donald Trump chatted about “television and ratings” during a personal phone call with actress Roseanne Barr on Wednesday, after the revival of her self-titled sitcom debuted to great success the day before.
The “Roseanne” reboot aired to a stellar 18.2 million viewers on Tuesday, far outperforming the network’s expectations. In the new leg of the show, Barr’s character Roseanne Conner is a Trump supporter with a sister who supports Hillary Clinton, and the first episode takes a look at the way the 2016 election affected American families.
Barr herself is a supporter of President Trump and called the call with the president “exciting” during an interview with “Good Morning America” on Thursday.
“We just kind of had a private conversation, but we talked about a lot of things and he’s just happy for me,” the actress told George Stephanopoulos during the interview.
“I’ve known him for many years and he’s done a lot of nice things for me over the years. It was just a friendly conversation about working and television and ratings,” Barr continued. “He really understands ratings and how they measure things.”
Barr also explained the reason for the show’s new, politically-charged content, which she said gives viewers a different, more “accurate” look at what’s happening in American families than they could find elsewhere.
“The idea that people can agree to disagree is kind of missing from everything. That’s what we need to do as a country, is figure out what we don’t like, talk to each other and discuss how we’re going to get it changed or fixed,” she said. “I really hope it opens up civil conversation between people instead of just mudslinging.”
The comedy, which originally aired from 1988 to 1997, will likely continue to center on political content in the coming weeks.
“I just wanted to have that dialogue about families torn apart by the election and their political differences of opinion and how we handle it,” Barr told The New York Times. “I thought that this was an important thing to say at this time.”
