When news broke this spring that Netflix was working to poach Black-ish creator Kenya Barris from ABC, there was no shortage of chatter about why Barris might want to leave the Disney family. The broadcast network Barris called home had already shelved a Black-ish episode about athletes kneeling, and had allowed another one of its sitcoms, Roseanne, to take a cheap, reductive shot at sitcoms centered around families of color. Sure enough, last month, Barris’s move to Netflix was officially announced, confirming that the producer would be leaving ABC only one year into his four-year contract.
Barris has mostly kept mum on the machinations and motivations of all this—until now. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published Wednesday, Barris opened up about his increasingly fraught relationship with network television and with ABC specifically—and the creative freedoms that he hopes his move to streaming will afford him.
Oh, and he offered some candid thoughts regarding one of his former network neighbors: “Fuck Roseanne [Barr].
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