BREAKING: Roseanne Barr to star in ‘Meemaw’ as eccentric grandma alongside Drea de Matteo, Tony Hinchcliffe—release date coming soon

The series was shot in Austin, Texas, and features Barr playing the matriarch of a “mixed-race family of preppers in Texas.” Barr’s character is on a quest to “throw her granddaughter the most fantastic bat mitzvah Texas has ever seen.”

Barr told Page Six of the show, “It’s every bit as revolutionary as ‘The Roseanne Show,’ if not more, and my work has improved with time. I want everybody who disagrees in a family to sit in the same room and just laugh and go, ‘Yeah, maybe I was an a**hole that time. Well, you were an a**hole this time. Oh, we’re all a**holes. Let’s get a beer.” She added, “I thought now would be a great time for people to actually hear from a Jew.”

Playing Barr’s daughter is Sopranos star Drea de Matteo, with Instagram sensation Indy Bugg playing Barr’s granddaughter. Barr said that Mo’Nique, who starred in the film Precious, had discovered the tween.

“Mo’Nique calls up, ‘Check this girl out. She not only looks like you, but she acts just like you, too. She was only 12, and I about fell over that I was able to get her. She’s such a star. You’ll see it in the first episode, in her first scene,” Barr said.

Also starring in the show is Randy Quaid, who plays Barr’s husband, Omar Gooding, the brother of Cuba Gooding Jr, who plays Barr’s son-in-law, and Doug Jones, with guest appearances from Jon Lovits, Kim Congdon, and Tony Hinchcliffe, the latter of whom plays Satan.

Barr said of Gooding, who had once appeared on Barr’s talk show, “He was getting sh*t for [doing ‘Meemaw’]. Anyone who asked him why he would work with such a horrible person as myself, he said, ‘Comedy is king.’ It takes somebody who really has faith in their talent to go against the Hollywood gatekeepers, you know.”

After her 2018 firing by Disney from the Roseanne show over a tweet in which she referred to former Michelle Obama aide Valerie Jarrett as the offspring of the “Muslim Brotherhood & Planet of the Apes,” a comment for which she apologized at the time and deleted, she began writing a series with Allan Stephan, who worked on Roseanne and Arli$$. That show had been about a rural Alabama farmer getting into the cannabis and magic mushroom trade.

That plotline was later scrapped, and she brought in Adam Sandler collaborator Allen Covert as a third writer, resulting in “Meemaw.” Barr said of the show’s plot that its a “semi-autobiographical series about a woman who hails from a very liberal East Coast Jewish family” and gets disinherited and has to live a lower-class lifestyle in Texas. Barr added, “It’s now more John Waters.”

Barr raised money through private investors for a fully union production and quietly began filming in Austin in November of 2025.

Barr said she feels the upcoming show is for everyone, saying, “My daughters are super woke and of course I love them, so I put in jokes for them, too, like I did on ‘Roseanne.’ I make fun of everybody ’cause everybody deserves to be made fun of who’s in power. So, I’ve got some great jokes about Republicans that the lefties are gonna love. I’m an equal opportunity destroyer."