Just the Network has partnered with Roseanne Barr on Meemaw, returning the comedian to television as a Texas grandma in a series already pitched to streamers.
Just the News reported that its parent company, Just the Network, inked a deal with Barr for the new comedy. The first season is already shot. Producers are pitching it to streaming companies for an early 2027 debut.
Barr, 73, plays a grandmother helping raise her grandkids on a Texas ranch. The cast includes Randy Quaid as the local sheriff and her romantic interest, Drea de Matteo as her daughter, and Omar Gooding as her son-in-law.
Just the Network management framed the series as part of a larger plan. The company wants to expand the Just the News brand into entertainment, comedy, and sports over the next year.
Barr cleared up online speculation with a direct post on X. She tied the project to John Solomon and the Just the News team.
Roseanne Barr wrote:
"Been getting lots of questions and excitement about Meemaw and there is one thing I want to clear up, I can confirm we are partnered with @jsolomonReports and his Just the News team on this great new show. You thought he just reports- Turns out his whole team has a great sense of humor too!"
Just the Network CEO Mark Meckler cast the move as a natural extension of the outlet’s audience. He said viewers who trust straight reporting also want unfiltered laughs.
Mark Meckler said:
"Just the News became a trusted brand for millions by sticking to just the facts and getting big stories right in an era of flawed journalism. We think the same audience is craving comedy that is just about the laughs, and sports that’s just about what happens on the field. And there’s no more iconic star to start with than Roseanne."
John Solomon pointed to Barr’s record. She delivered two of the biggest comedies in television history as TV’s first mom. He said he expects her to do it again in the grandma role.
John Solomon said:
"Roseanne scored not one, but two of the biggest comedies in history as television’s first mom. I’m confident she can do it again as TV’s sassy new grandma."
Barr described the premise in plain terms. The show centers on a patriotic grandmother who runs a mixed-race “prepper family” in Texas. Prepper families, as the coverage noted via Meridian magazine, focus on everyday household readiness, communication, and practical skills rather than extreme isolation.
She has not widely screened the finished season yet. She still called the result the funniest work she has done and said she had a ball playing a wacky old lady.
Roseanne Barr said:
"It’s about a patriotic grandmother who is the matriarch of a mixed-race 'prepper family' in Texas. I haven’t really showed it to anybody yet. But it is so funny. It’s the funniest s*** I’ve ever done, and I had a ball and I play a really wacky old lady this time."
Gooding, a stand-up comic, plays her son-in-law. Barr said much of the show’s emotional repair runs through their scenes. She also said she met resistance when casting Black actors.
Barr linked Meemaw to unfinished business from her last network run. She said she was canceled out of The Conners over a joke about Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett and then blackballed in Hollywood for the decade that followed.
She recalled the earlier return to the working-class family sitcom as an attempt to speak again to ordinary Americans. In her account, network officials fought her at every turn.
Roseanne Barr said:
"I was so excited to go back and say something new that hadn’t been said about the working people of the backbone of this country. And they didn’t like it, ever, the people at the network, and they tried to derail me. I see that now. They tried to derail me every step of the way. Meemaw is everything that they would not allow me to do."
She also said she once felt she had retapped the national mood. “I lined up with the, what do they call it? The zeitgeist. I mined the zeitgeist again. I knew I hadn’t lost my connection to people’s hearts,” she said of that earlier stretch.
Quaid, de Matteo, known to many viewers from her recurring role as Adriana on The Sopranos, and Gooding round out the named core cast. No full episode order or additional cast list appeared in the initial report. Specific streamers receiving the pitch were not named either.
What Barr could not say on network television last time is now shot, packaged, and looking for a streaming home. Audiences locked out of that earlier version finally get the chance to decide if the laughs land.
