Whitney Cummings: None of us in a million years thought Roseanne Barr was racist

Anyone who loves the work of comedian, writer, and producer Whitney Cummings knows she lived in Philly and attended the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania (magna cum laude, yet) until 2003.

It was her time at Penn that woke the comic giant inside her, pushing her to go to L.A., learn the ropes of the biz, and create sitcoms such as 2 Broke Girls (2011–17) and Whitney (2011–13), as well as become a producer and writer for ABC’s 2018 revival of Roseanne.

That hit program imploded from the weight of racist Twitter comments by its star, Roseanne Barr. It was a shock to Cummings, who left before its spin-off, The Conners, was created. Cummings is on a roll, having co-created a half-hour comedy for Amazon with Philadelphia-raised producer-writer Lee Daniels based on the currency of #MeToo and PC culture on college campuses. Plus, she’s getting ready to film her next stand-up special with a several-date tour stop at Helium Comedy Club in Philadelphia starting Jan. 31.

I didn’t ever plan to produce or write, but, I didn’t have a choice. If you get to Hollywood and want to be on a TV show, you don’t get to just be in it. You have to go beyond that. You have to overcome obstacles, take responsibility. It’s almost corrupt and unfair the way things happen there — like a lot of businesses. Hollywood is not a meritocracy. I realized that if I didn’t create my own way, nothing would happen. I didn’t really fit into any boxes where television roles were concerned. I was always too tall, too weird, too loud. I just started writing things for myself.

I was. I got cast in things here and there, but it was always as the girlfriend who doesn’t get to have the jokes. Or as the super-annoying girl, a stereotype I felt stupid perpetuating. I was impatient, getting my feelings hurt and broke, so something had to change fast.

That took a minute, even when I was actually doing it on 2 Broke Girls. For a while, every character of mine had something of me in them, all the weird voices in my head. That’s why I took the job executive-producing for Roseanne, because I wanted to work with established characters and different voices than the ones I knew.

I might even be a moderate at this point, but yes.

Yeah, there was. Look, every talented person has baggage. I knew Roseanne was mercurial and unpredictable. I knew about her past comments. I also knew about her bigger mental issues, of which I had a lot of compassion. She was a Bernie supporter who went to Trump, which was interesting to me. I didn’t read her Twitter feed regularly. Besides, none of us in a million years thought she was racist. She was always so progressive, so forward-thinking. We were under the impression she voted for Trump for progressive values, not bigotry or xenophobic issues. She’s always been a champion of the working class, and that’s why we figured she liked Trump.

Yes. And we made a lot of mistakes not turning over every rock. Then again, she has that reputation, ‘Hey, that’s just nutty Roseanne.’ You minimize it. Anyone who saw me during the production knew I was stressing because we wanted the show to be neutral, to show all sides and be neither red nor blue state. We wanted to give everyone something to root for. But that’s not how it ended up going, was it? The whole thing was incredibly disappointing. No one could ever have imagined anyone with so much at stake sending out a tweet like that.

Nope and nope. I’m at a point in my life where I’m not about confrontation. Besides, it’s not my place to tell a grown woman how to behave. I had a conversation with her about her tweets before the show started — and she was receptive — but it was about how we, as comedians, give away so much on our Twitter feeds. I say hang on to some mystery, save it for the show. She was tweeting some political stuff, but I wanted her to save it for on air. I wanted to show a separation between Roseanne Barr and Roseanne Conner — show a delineation — but creatively she had such a huge persona. Obviously, my words did not have a huge impact on her.

Yes. I miss it a ton. I also believe in taking breaks so that you can grow as a person. After I do a special, I take four months off, because you can develop these habits, these verbal tics. I need to be a human being, go to the grocery store. To do observational humor well, you can’t just go from airport to comedy club. You have a real life so as not to limit your abilities and worldview.

Not when I first got there. When I was at U of P, I was modeling — and it wasn’t really modeling, just walking around the mall in wedding dresses to make money — doing stuff at QVC. I was also very serious, I was protesting. An activist. A lot of my experiences at Penn are in the Lee Daniels show. I had a professor at U of P who, while teaching us about the First Amendment, played us George Carlin records, especially the one with the seven words you can never say. I had never even heard Carlin before that. That turned my head around. That professor is why I became a comic.

No. Zero. Most comics I know are pretty serious people. They come from struggle or chaos. I didn’t come from that, but funny was just never my thing. Plus, Penn was expensive. I turned four years into three just to afford it. Once you see the bills form Penn, there’s not a lot of funny things about it.

God, yes. People in Philly are honest to a fault. Critical. Authentic. I got there when I was 19, and found that they were the nicest people on the planet, as long as you were an Eagles fan. Tell me that’s not still true.

Whitney Cummings appears Jan. 31 to Feb. 2 at Helium Comedy Club, 2031 Sansom St., heliumcomedy.com