Michael Fishman spent eight years quietly absorbing strangers’ takes on the scandal that detonated the show that raised him, and this week the politeness ran out on camera.
The California native, 44, who played DJ Conner from age six through the entire Roseanne run and into The Conners, unloaded in an emotional Instagram video Monday after yet another commenter insisted America had “backstabbed” Roseanne Barr and blamed woke culture for the 2018 cancellation. “I get these kinds of ignorant and inaccurate comments daily,” Fishman said, noting he has handled them quietly for over eight years, and even crediting this one for at least omitting the death threats that sometimes come with the genre. Then the patience ended: “After eight years, turning the other cheek is really not helping.“
His verdict was blunt: “Sadly, in this case, there was no joke. And the show was rightfully canceled. It’s the last time I’m really gonna go into this.“
And he turned the commenter’s own word into the video’s sharpest line, saying there was no comedy in the post, only damage and dehumanizing, and that “the only people who are backstabbed were the people who were targeted by the statements. And those who became collateral damage from it.“
The record he defended is settled: the 2018 revival premiered as the biggest show in America and was canceled within months after Barr posted a tweet about former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett widely condemned as racist, which she deleted and apologized for. ABC’s then-president called it “abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values.” The cast rebuilt around The Conners without her through 2025; Barr, 73, publicly chastised Fishman and Sara Gilbert at the time for their statements before announcing she forgave them, and she maintains to this day the firing was unjust.
Yet even mid-snap, Fishman refused the full break, delivering the line that keeps this from being just another pile-on: “Good people make mistakes. And I love the one who made this mistake. I always will,” he said, adding he has shown Barr compassion continuously and always would.
The Warning He Ended On
The video closed with the message that named the whole eight years: “Be smart enough to just shut the hell up,” he said of those defending racism in his mentions. “Don’t finish the statement, don’t hit send and certainly don’t rage against anybody else.” Words, he reminded them, carry real-world consequences.
His comment section answered with receipts instead of rage. “I knew someone working on that reboot. I felt so bad when Rosanne went ham and got it shut down. My friend could have bought a home of that job, had she just been decent. Could have easily had a ten year run,” one user testified. Another mourned rather than raged: “I totally understand that there’s a grieving for the person she was, and a hope for healing for the person she has become.” The most-liked voice distilled it: “the Roseanne we thought we knew was all about lifting up other strong women in male dominated spaces. So her going after a successful woman of color, so publicly, was really baffling to me.“
Eight years of turning the other cheek ended in one video. The love survived. The patience did not.
