Drea de Matteo is part of Meemaw: A Modern-Day Fable, the self-produced series Roseanne Barr is now taking to distributors. The project has moved out of production and into the harder part of the process: finding a home for an eight-episode indie run that was shot in Austin.
Allan Stephan said on Friday that the series has “a lot of nibbles right now,” and added, “I know [representatives for the show] are in talks with a few places.” Representatives for Meemaw: A Modern-Day Fable have been sending a trailer around to interested parties, which is usually the first real sales tool for an independent title trying to move beyond its own financing.
Roseanne Barr and Jake Pentland
Barr raised the money independently for the first season with help from her son, Jake Pentland. That matters because the show is not waiting on a studio to decide whether it gets made; the season already exists, which shifts the pressure to distribution, where access to audiences is decided package by package.
The cast also includes Randy Quaid, Omar Gooding, Doug Jones and Indy Bugg, with Jon Lovitz, Tony Hinchcliffe and Kim Congdon appearing in cameos. Allen Covert helped write the series, and Stephan said the title is a fable because part of the storytelling involves animals. The episodes run 30 minutes each, a format that can make the show easier to place if buyers want a compact comedy rather than a long-form commitment.
Austin and 2018
The project carries extra weight because Barr’s earlier Roseanne reboot returned at ABC in 2018 and was then canceled after her tweet about Valerie Jarrett. Barr apologized to Valerie Jarrett and to all Americans, writing, “I apologize to Valerie Jarrett and to all Americans. I am truly sorry for making a bad joke about her politics and her looks. I should have known better. Forgive me — my joke was in bad taste.”
Stephan said Barr’s new project is a nonpartisan effort meant to appeal to the masses, but none of this guarantees Meemaw: A Modern-Day Fable is coming to a major streaming platform. The trailer circulation and those distributor talks are the real milestone here: the series is finished enough to sell, yet still waiting for the kind of deal that turns an indie production into something viewers can actually find.
The open question is straightforward: which distributors or streaming platforms are actually in talks for Meemaw: A Modern-Day Fable? Until that answer lands, the show’s next step is less about production and more about whether a finished eight-episode series can clear the final business hurdle.
