Fate of Roseanne Barr’s character may have been revealed

New York Daily News

John Goodman may have provided some insight into the fate of Roseanne Barr’s character.

The actor seemed to drop a hint while discussing his character, Dan Conner, on the upcoming sitcom “The Conners,” which serves as a spinoff to “Roseanne” after that series was canceled following a racist tweet by Ms. Barr.

“It’s an unknown,” Mr. Goodman told The Sunday Times. “I guess he’ll be mopey and sad because his wife’s dead.”

Mr. Goodman’s character was married to Ms. Barr’s on “Roseanne,” which ran for nine seasons from 1988-97 before briefly being reprised this March. The series had been renewed for another season but was canceled by ABC hours after Ms. Barr posted a tweet calling former Barack Obama aide Valerie Jarrett the baby of “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes.”

The network later announced that “The Conners” — sans Ms. Barr — was in the works, but had not addressed how they will handle Ms. Barr’s absence on the show.

Mr. Goodman, 66, says the show’s cancellation took a toll on him.

“I was brokenhearted, but I thought, ‘OK, it’s just show business, I’m going to let it go.’ But I went through a period, about a month, where I was very depressed,” he told the British outlet. “I’m a depressive anyway, so any excuse that I can get to lower myself, I will. But that had a great deal to do with it, more than I wanted to admit.”

Mr. Goodman said during the interview that he and Ms. Barr “were work friends,” but he contends that she isn’t racist.

“I know, I know, for a fact that she’s not a racist,” he said.

Ms. Barr appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show last month and claimed that her tweet wasn’t racist.

“I was so sad, and I’m so sad that anyone thinks that of me,” Ms. Barr said at the time.

Mr. Goodman’s character originally appeared to have died following a heart attack toward the end of the show’s original run, but it was later explained that multiple story lines that appeared later in the series were dreamed by Roseanne. Showrunner Bruce Helford then revealed earlier this year that Ms. Barr’s character only imagined her husband’s death in a book she was writing, and that it didn’t actually happen, according to Thrillist.

Mr. Goodman will be joined on “The Conners,” which premieres on Oct. 16, by other members of the “Roseanne” cast such as Laurie Metcalf and Sara Gilbert.