For the reboot, Roseanne will be at odds with her sister Jackie, played by Laurie Metcalf, over President Donald Trump. Barr herself is a vocal Trump supporter, and has talked about how meaningful it felt to place one of TV’s quintessential working-class families in Year Two of the Trump administration. Roseanne Barr says she thought it was important to show how the Conner family deals with the same issues that many American families currently face. "It shows people's different opinions and how they resolve them," Barr said at the New York premiere of the show on Monday night. When it airs at 8 p.m. Tuesday, “Roseanne” will be up against “NCIS,” “The Voice,” everything on Netflix, Hulu and YouTube, and, of course, the cable networks that filter politics through the old tropes of opposition, anger and judgment.
– Roseanne returns to the airwaves Tuesday night after signing off in 1997, and the reboot is getting lots of attention for more than the usual reasons of nostalgia. The show, especially the premiere that airs at 8pm Eastern on ABC, will have a distinctly Trumpian theme, reports the AP. It seems that Roseanne Barr's namesake character, Roseanne Conner, voted for Donald Trump, a decision that has caused serious friction with sister Jackie, played once again by Laurie Metcalf. A look at some of the coverage: Her argument: In the show, Roseanne explains her vote thusly: “He talked about jobs, Jackie. He said he’d shape things up." When Jackie tells her to watch the news because things are now worse, Roseanne shoots back, "Not on the real news." It's the most "overtly political exchange" not only in the episode but in all nine of the new episodes to come, writes Joanna Weiss at Politico. She talks to executive producer Bruce Helford, who says the show will aim to get polarized families talking again, to "put the whole discourse out in the open."