‘The Conners’ moves on without fired matriarch Roseanne Barr
John Goodman is eager to build a new series, ABC’s “The Conners,” from the wreckage of last spring’s “Roseanne” cancellation, but there’s clearly something — make that someone — missing.
“It felt great to be back, but there’s a hollow center. I miss Rosie real bad,” says Goodman, who worked with Roseanne Barr for a nine-year run starting in 1988 and on last year’s top-rated revival before she was fired after a racist tweet last spring.
But he’s happy to be back with his colleagues. “It’s like a family around here. We make each other laugh.”
With the exception of Barr, Goodman, who plays Dan Conner, will press on with the rest of the cast in the spinoff (7 p.m. Tuesday on WLS-Channel 7), which includes Sara Gilbert, Laurie Metcalf, Lecy Goranson and Michael Fishman.
The blue-collar Illinois family will adjust to the apparent death — confirmed by Goodman in an interview in August — of irreverent matriarch Roseanne Conner, whose absence will be explained in Tuesday’s premiere.
“The Conners” will continue to look at topical issues from a working-class perspective, including drug use, immigration and the struggle to make ends meet.
“We’re similar in that we have always wanted to stay true to this kind of family and the stories they would encounter struggling to make it emotionally, financially, but hopefully making people laugh and sometimes cry along the way,” Gilbert says. “What’s different now is we are missing our matriarch in the show, so our roles are redefined as they would be in a family. People step up, relationships strengthen, people have to step into more of a caregiver role. It’s allowed us to explore some new stories.”
Roseanne’s rambunctious political opinions, and boosterism for President Trump, will be absent in the new 10-episode season. But a new character, son D.J. Conner’s military-veteran wife, Geena (Maya Lynne Robinson), adds a different conservative perspective as an orderly, church-going arrival in the none-too-disciplined Conner home.
“Roseanne,” an iconic hit during its first incarnation, became TV’s top-rated show (averaging 20 million viewers) and a cultural phenomenon when ABC revived it last March. But the network canceled the series in late May after Barr’s racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett, a former adviser to President Obama.