Jeffrey Ufberg/WireImage/Getty Images, Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for SiriusXM
Roseanne Barr has long been one of President Donald Trump’s most ardent celebrity supporters, and as we found out earlier this week, the feeling is mutual. After the Roseanne reboot’s unexpectedly popular premiere on Tuesday, Barr revealed she got a congratulations call from none other than the president of the United States.
“It was pretty exciting. I’ll tell you that much,” she said on Good Morning America. “They said, ‘Hold please for the president of the United States of America’ and [that] was about the most exciting thing ever. It was just very sweet of him to congratulate us.”
There was a lot of buzz leading up to Roseanne‘s premiere, but the show still crushed ratings predictions, drawing 18.2 million viewers, which is 10 percent more than its finale in 1998. Unsurprisingly, most of Roseanne‘s viewers were in states and districts with a high population of Trump voters. New York and Los Angeles, the country’s top viewer markets, delivered lower ratings for Roseanne, while Tulsa, Oklahoma; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Kansas City, Missouri, were its top markets — all areas that Trump carried easily in the 2016 election. The only blue market to deliver high ratings for Roseanne was Chicago, where the show is set, but despite being a huge market, it was only the fifth-highest for the show. All the markets that performed better were smaller.
It’s no wonder Trump voters turned out for the Roseanne reboot since Barr’s very public support for the controversial president made a lot of headlines leading up to the premiere. She’s historically been unapologetic about her support for Trump even though she never formally endorsed him. She told The Hollywood Reporter during the race, “We should be so lucky if Trump won, because then it wouldn’t be Hillary,” drawing praise from Trump then.
Reactions on social media to the reboot’s premiere have been mixed. Of course, with ratings like those, there’s some expected support.
But there was also plenty of criticism.
As the season progresses, we’ll just have to see if Roseanne can maintain its initial ratings success. But there’s one thing nobody can deny right now: The premiere was a huge hit despite controversial politics.
