Roseanne actors ‘excited to be back’
Revamped show The Conners to keep story arcs planned for stars Goodman and Gilbert
BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF.— ABC had the toprated show on television — for eight weeks, anyway — until its Roseanne revival imploded after its star, Roseanne Barr, sent a racist tweet.
The show’s planned second season was cancelled, throwing a wrench into the network’s fall plans, and effectively ending Barr’s prime-time career.
In her first public comments about the cancellation, ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey said she knew the revival was a risk from the start.
“We had had some conversations, because she had her volatile moments in the first run of the show,” she told USA Today in an interview at the Television Critics Association press tour. “And in talking about what her hopes and expectations were for the new show, (she) felt very grounded and forward-thinking and excited about storytelling. And I’m a big believer in second chances, and so we certainly went forward with everybody wanting to make their best effort.”
But even in January, facing the same TV critics, she had to confront Barr’s tweets. “I try not to worry about something outside of our control, but at a certain point it starts to reflect badly on our company,” Dungey said.
Many people applauded the decision to cancel the series, but not Barr, who in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News last month cast herself as a victim.
Now ABC is moving forward with an unlikely spinoff, The Conners, premiering Oct.16 and featuring the same cast — John Goodman as husband Dan, Laurie Metcalf as sister Jackie and Sara Gilbert as daughter Darlene, among others — minus its former title star.
Under Screen Actors Guild rules, ABC and producer Carsey-Werner were on the hook to pay those stars for seven episodes anyway, because the show had already been renewed. Barr had to be financially separated from the series, from which she profited as an executive producer, before ABC would agree to revisit it.
“Putting The Conners together happened very smoothly,” Dungey said.
“The actors were excited to be back,” she said, adding that Roseanne writers and crew members remained largely intact.
While the 10-episode spinoff is likely to face lower ratings (at least 25 per cent, according to estimates), “from a creative standpoint I feel very good about it,” she said. “I’ve seen three outlines, and I feel like the writers came into (the new season) with a lot of stories they still wanted to tell about this family living in middle America in these economic circumstances, and most of that hasn’t shifted.
“There were (planned) arcs for Darlene or Dan they wanted to do, that they still are going to be able to cover.”
They’ll just have to do it without the show’s anchor, and it remains to be seen how key she was to its appeal.
The central mystery? How she’ll be written out of the show. (Rumours are that Roseanne Conner will be killed off.) On that, Dungey took the fifth.
“We’ve taken a little page out of the Shonda and Marvel universes, and are not talking about it. You’ll just have to tune in on the16th.”