Roseanne Barr lashes out at how sitcom character was killed

Roseanne Barr has issued a fiery statement over the "grim and morbid" way her character was killed off in ABC sitcom The Conners, formerly titled Roseanne.

The disgraced comedienne was dumped off the show after making a racist comment on Twitter, comparing a black US politician to the offspring of an ape and Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood.

Barr's character was revealed to have died of an opioid overdose in the US premiere of The Conners this week.

She responded on Twitter with four simple words: "I ain't dead, bitches".

In a longer statement she released jointly with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on Facebook, Barr was more restrained.

"[The character Roseanne's death] lent an unnecessary grim and morbid dimension to an otherwise happy family show," she and Boteach said.

"We regret that ABC chose to cancel Roseanne by killing off the Roseanne Conner character... This was a choice the network did not have to make."

The Conners reportedly debuted to disappointing ratings in the US, down 55 percent from the premiere of Roseanne in 2017.

Barr has a history of making offensive statements on social media, including referring to Muslims, Palestinians and Palestinian rights campaigners as "Nazis".

She has deleted many of her controversial tweets - including a call for a nuclear attack on the non-Jewish students and staff of University of California - and some accounts she has retweeted have been disabled by Twitter for hate speech violations.

Newshub.