{"id":876966,"date":"2026-10-10T02:00:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T02:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/876966\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T02:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T02:00:09","slug":"roseanne-barr-indie-tv-series-courting-distributors-co-creator-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/876966\/","title":{"rendered":"Roseanne Barr Indie TV Series Courting Distributors, Co-Creator Says"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tRoseanne Barr<\/a>\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe have a lot of nibbles right now,\u201d 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. <\/p>\n

\n\tStephan didn\u2018t name any specific platforms that have been sniffing around but said \u201cI know [representatives for the show] are in talks with a few places.\u201d (Of course, as the co-creator of the series, Stephan has a vested interest in portraying the project as in-demand.)<\/p>\n

\n\tPage Six Hollywood<\/a> broke the news on Thursday that the former sitcom star, whose Roseanne reboot on ABC was canceled<\/a> in 2018 after Barr posted an offensive tweet about former advisor to President Barack Obama Valerie Jarrett, had filmed the eight-episode indie series. <\/p>\n

\n\tMeemaw 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. <\/p>\n

\n\tComedy scribe and producer Allen Covert (Murder Mystery, Eight Crazy Nights), a longtime collaborator of Adam Sandler, helped write the series.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey\u2019re struggling farmers, where everybody is at today, especially farmers,\u201c Stephan said of the show\u2019s characters. \u201cAnd it\u2019s about surviving in the world as it is today, trying to keep food in the table and the family together.\u201c<\/p>\n

\n\tNone 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\u2018s cancellation at ABC, Barr isn\u2019t a total pariah in Hollywood.<\/p>\n

\n\tBarr raised the money independently for Meemaw\u2019s first season with the help of her son, Jake Pentland, Stephan said. He added that he didn\u2019t 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.)<\/p>\n

\n\tThe episodes of Meemaw are 30 minutes each, but don\u2018t call it a sitcom. \u201cWe call it a fable because part of the storytelling involves some animals and it\u2019s just a little different,\u201d Stephan said.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter breaking into entertainment as a stand-up comic, Barr shot to stardom in the late \u201980s 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\u2018s tweet led to its cancellation. Barr apologized at the time for the tweet saying, \u201cI 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 \u2014 my joke was in bad taste.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tStephan says Barr\u2018s latest project is a nonpartisan effort meant to appeal to the masses, much like Roseanne did in its heyday. \u201cThe show is very representative of all people,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s no Trump side, there\u2019s no democratic side. It\u2019s just the family struggling to get by and what they have to deal with to get by.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roseanne Barr\u2019s new independently produced television series is being shopped to distributors and has fielded interest from a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":876967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[88,3175,92],"class_list":["post-876966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-roseanne-barr","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=876966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/876967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=876966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=876966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=876966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}