Roseanne Barr was married three times — first to motel clerk Bill Pentland and then to actor Tom Arnold before tying the knot with her former bodyguard, Ben Thomas. She found love again and finally settled with her current boyfriend and writer, Johnny Argent, in 2003. The duo currently lives on a macadamia nut farm in Hawaii.
Of all her romantic partners, Tom stood out as the best person to handle Barr’s frequent erratic behaviors. He was a regular on the Roseanne show, had his own sitcom, and co-managed a sandwich shop in Iowa with Barr, which went out of business in the ‘90s.
Barr’s shortcomings
Barr was let go from starring in ABC’s 2018 Roseanne revival after going off on the African-American advisor to the Obama administration, Valerie Jarett, on social media. She posted that Valerie looked like “Muslim brotherhood and planet of the apes had a baby” causing outrage online. Disney immediately fired Barr and renamed the show, The Conners as a result.
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The media went to Tom for an answer during this period and he spoke against his ex-wife’s comments. He agreed she was racist on Good Morning Britain and issued tweets condemning her previous posts in support of the QAnon and Pizzagate conspiracies. “ABC execs figured out a way to control me,” he explained. “They blocked me from promoting anything on ABC because I called out Roseanne Barr & her dangerous tweets.”
Was Barr’s mental health to blame?
While speaking with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Tom said he was “not surprised at what went down,” per Barr’s misbehavior, noting that he “tweeted a lot to watch out.” He also stated she had mental health issues that caused her to act distastefully. “Anyone with mental health issues like Roseanne is gonna heighten things,” he said. “She’s having mental health issues right now, and I’m sure that’s part of this. It doesn’t make it okay. They had to cancel the show.”
The actress was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder in the ‘90s, and she condemned the network for killing off her character despite knowing her struggles. “I’ve survived. I’ve come out on the other side of it, finally. But it was a witch-burning. And it was terrifying,” she told the Los Angeles Times in February. “When they killed my character off, that was a message to me, knowing that I’m mentally ill or have mental issues, that they did want me to commit suicide.”