Roseanne Barr’s new independently produced television series is being shopped to distributors and has fielded interest from a few, according to her co-creator on the project.
“We have a lot of nibbles right now,” writer-producer Allan Stephan told The Hollywood Reporter on Friday. Representatives for the comedy series, co-created by Stephan and Barr and called Meemaw: A Modern-Day Fable, have been sending a trailer around to interested parties and targeting streamers.
Stephan didn‘t name any specific platforms that have been sniffing around but said “I know [representatives for the show] are in talks with a few places.” (Of course, as the co-creator of the series, Stephan has a vested interest in portraying the project as in-demand.)
Page Six Hollywood broke the news on Thursday that the former sitcom star, whose Roseanne reboot on ABC was canceled in 2018 after Barr posted an offensive tweet about former advisor to President Barack Obama Valerie Jarrett, had filmed the eight-episode indie series.
Meemaw is said to follow the matriarch (played by Barr) of a Texas family of preppers who is attempting to organize a blowout bat mitvah for her granddaughter. Alongside Barr, Randy Quaid, Drea de Matteo, Omar Gooding, Doug Jones and Indy Bugg star. Comedians Jon Lovitz, Tony Hinchcliffe and Kim Congdon make cameos in the series, which shot in Austin.
Comedy scribe and producer Allen Covert (Murder Mystery, Eight Crazy Nights), a longtime collaborator of Adam Sandler, helped write the series.
“They’re struggling farmers, where everybody is at today, especially farmers,“ Stephan said of the show’s characters. “And it’s about surviving in the world as it is today, trying to keep food in the table and the family together.“
None of this guarantees Meemaw is coming to a major streaming platform. Plenty of creators of independent shows engage in talks with companies and not all of them land a deal. But it does appear to show that, eight years after her eponymous show‘s cancellation at ABC, Barr isn’t a total pariah in Hollywood.
Barr raised the money independently for Meemaw’s first season with the help of her son, Jake Pentland, Stephan said. He added that he didn’t know the details of the fundraising efforts, leaving the question of which funders wanted to help bring a new Barr project to the world unanswered for now. (THR has reached out to Pentland for comment.)
The episodes of Meemaw are 30 minutes each, but don‘t call it a sitcom. “We call it a fable because part of the storytelling involves some animals and it’s just a little different,” Stephan said.
After breaking into entertainment as a stand-up comic, Barr shot to stardom in the late ’80s with her ABC sitcom Roseanne, where she played a working-class mom in Illinois. After concluding in 1997, the show was rebooted in 2018 at ABC until Barr‘s tweet led to its cancellation. Barr apologized at the time for the tweet saying, “I apologize to Valerie Jarrett and to all Americans. I am truly sorry for making a bad joke about her politics and her looks. I should have known better. Forgive me — my joke was in bad taste.”
Stephan says Barr‘s latest project is a nonpartisan effort meant to appeal to the masses, much like Roseanne did in its heyday. “The show is very representative of all people,” he said. “There’s no Trump side, there’s no democratic side. It’s just the family struggling to get by and what they have to deal with to get by.”
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