Decades after reuniting with her daughter, Brandi Brown, whom she put up for adoption, Roseanne Barr opens up about how a tabloid magazine helped make the reunion possible.
Videos by Suggest
In her new documentary, Roseanne in America, Barr reflects on her reunion with Brown. The comedian spoke about how she had Brown in 1971, when she was 18. This was Barr’s first pregnancy.
Following the birth, Barr said she was “shipped away to the Salvation Army Home for Unwed Mothers” in Denver.
“When I gave my daughter up for adoption, I said to her, ‘I’ll see you again when you’re 18 because I’m not going to change my name, I’m going to be famous. I’m going to have my own show named Roseanne,” Barr recalled.
Barr said she was able to reunite with Brown when famed tabloid magazine National Enquirer found personal information about Brown.
“It all came out because when I got famous,” the comedian pointed out. “The National Enquirer found my daughter by bribing someone in records in Colorado for my name, her name, and her adoptive parents’ name.”
Instead of harboring any ill will against the National Enquirer about its unethical invasion of privacy, Barr said, “Am I upset about it? No. I’m grateful.”
Roseanne Barr Recalled More Details About the Circumstances Surrounding Her First Pregnancy
Reflecting on her first pregnancy, Roseanne Barr revealed why she was forced to give up Brandi.
“Mom didn’t want the neighbors to be ashamed of her,” Barr explained. “When I look back on that, I about bust a gut laughing because they were all drunks and perverts.”
Including Brown, Barr is the mother of five children. She shares three children, daughters Jessica and Jennifer, and son Jake, with her first husband, Bill Pentland. She also has a son, Buck, with her third husband, Ben Thomas.
Barr previously opened up about the reunion in 1989. “A tabloid called to tell me, ‘We found your daughter,'” she told PEOPLE at the time. “I was stunned. They had gotten hold of the birth certificate of the baby girl I bore out of wedlock and gave up for adoption after nine days in Denver when I was 18.”
She initially felt “p—ed off” about the tabloid’s discovery. “I had left information allowing her to find me when she was 21,” Barr noted. “I had even told my kids about the adoption a year earlier because I knew she was 17 and might try to find me.”
“Now the paper knew where she lived, her school, who her mother and father were,” Roseanne said. “They knew everything but had only told her that her mother was someone famous. They had been asking questions, showing up in [her adoptive parents’] garage, scaring the s—out of them.”
Barr begged the tabloid to stay the “f— away” and then she panicked. “[I] hired a private detective to track her down rather than have her read about me being her mom in a tabloid, which was so dirty and sleazy.” They reunited days later.