It's been a whirlwind of a month for Roseanne Barr for all the wrong reasons.

The actress and comedian went from having one of the most popular shows on American TV with her reboot of 'Roseanne', to having it cancelled in the space of days, after a series of tweets that compared former White House adviser Valerie Jarrett to a character from 'Planet of the Apes'.

She later blamed her tweets on a reaction to sleeping aid Ambien, but ABC swiftly cancelled 'Roseanne' and publicly denounced Barr. Now, she has given an interview to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, which was conducted shortly after her firing, and an edited transcript of it has been released.

In it, she discusses the incident and says that she wants to reach out to Jarrett to apologise personally.

“It’s really hard to say this but, I didn’t mean what they think I meant,” she said, referring to her tweet. “And that’s what’s so painful. But I have to face that it hurt people. When you hurt people even unwillingly there’s no excuse. I don’t want to run off and blather on with excuses. But I apologize to anyone who thought, or felt offended and who thought that I meant something that I, in fact, did not mean. It was my own ignorance, and there’s no excuse for that ignorance.”

She tearfully added: "I have black children in my family. I can’t, I can’t let ’em say these things about that, after 30 years of my putting my family and my health and my livelihood at risk to stand up for people. I’m a lot of things, a loud mouth and all that stuff. But I’m not stupid for God’s sake. I never would have wittingly called any black person, [I would never had said] they are a monkey. I just wouldn’t do that. I didn’t do that. And people think that I did that and it just kills me.

"I didn’t do that. And if they do think that, I’m just so sorry that I was so unclear and stupid. I’m very sorry. But I don’t think that and I would never do that. I have loved ones who are African-American, and I just can’t stand it. I’ve made a huge error and I told ABC when they called me.”

On Friday, it was announced that the rest of the 'Roseanne' cast - without Barr - would be involved in a spin-off of the series called 'The Conners', which is set to air this autumn.

Read the full transcript here.