TORONTO -- Roseanne Barr became a comedy trailblazer with her beloved working-class sitcom about life as a mom and bawdy standup routines in a male-dominated industry, but she's not a fan of being categorized along gender lines.
"I had somebody say to me: 'Look at all of these great female comics,' and they included my name with all of these women comics -- and that made me really angry," the American comedy legend said in a recent interview from her home in Hawaii.
"That's just another way to put us all in a ghetto, and I don't like it. I've resisted it my entire career of over 30 years, and I'm definitely not going to go with it now.
"I'm funnier than most of the men. Don't put me in a ghetto. Everyone can go in there if they want to, but I will hold my own against anybody -- male or female -- and I think I'll prove that onstage."
She'll get a chance to share her trademark humour as the headliner at the JFL42 comedy festival at the Sony Centre in Toronto on Friday.
"I'll tell you, there's just a level of freedom on stage as standup comics that you can perform, you can do your jokes, you're not answering to six guys in suits telling you what's funny because they went to Yale," said Barr, who has appeared as a judge on the comedy competition series "Last Comic Standing."
The comedian had tour stops earlier this month in Calgary, Regina and Winnipeg, and said she's always wanted to have the chance to tour the country.
"I do think they're a little bit more well-read in Canada. They read more than we do down here," she said.
"Here, people get their news from one or two television channels. But people seem to read a lot in Canada, so they're smart and fast and a great audience."
In recent years, Barr has made guest appearances on sitcoms including "The Office" and "Portlandia." Nearly two decades after her award-winning sitcom "Roseanne" ended, Barr isn't ruling out a return to the airwaves.
"I've written a boatload of sitcoms for myself, and I think about it all the time," she said.
"I've paid my dues. I like to have fun," she added. "But that's not to say that I wouldn't if things were right.... In fact, I'm talking to people right now all over the place for another show. So we'll see. I wrote a really good show, so we'll see."
The new material will likely resonate with fans of Roseanne Conner, the brash, blue-collar mom Barr portrayed on her landmark sitcom, which aired from 1988 to 1997.
"It's kind of the same thing that I do best, which is family," said the Emmy-winning actress, who worked on the script with her daughter, writer Jenny Pentland.
"She's got grandkids, and she's just a woman for these times."
