ROSEANNE’S BACK
The hit TV show is returning, with star Roseanne Barr firmly at the helm.
The Rose Parade is off. Here inside Stage 15, where US network ABC hopes to recapture lightning in a bottle of Schlitz beer with its revival of Roseanne, the Rose Parade is the somewhat affectionate name for Roseanne Barr and her entourage. But there will be no Barr-led procession on this particular Saturday in December, where one of TV’S most beloved ensembles—john Goodman (Dan), Laurie Metcalf (Jackie), Sara Gilbert (Darlene), Lecy Goranson (Becky), Sarah Chalke (who replaced Goranson as Becky in 1993), and Michael Fishman (D.j.)—have gathered after filming late the night before to promote their much-anticipated return to American screens on March 27 (Network Ten plans to air it here soon). Barr has called in sick. “She has laryngitis,” chimes in one executive, as if anyone may doubt Barr’s ill-timed condition.
In Barr’s defence, the 65-year-old comedian did seem a little subdued during the show’s penultimate taping in front of a studio audience. While taking a break from a scene in the Conner kitchen (which has been painstakingly replicated down to the faded wallpaper and pickled eggs in the pantry), the usually gregarious Barr stood quietly at the stove top while her onscreen hubby cracked jokes to the crew. But an extraordinary thing happened when the red light outside the studio began to flash: Roseanne pulled back her shoulders, put a smirk on her face, and started razzing Dan in her signature shrill voice. “It’s like no time has passed at all,” marvels Metcalf, who plays Roseanne’s sister, Jackie. “We were a family for nine seasons. And I had a feeling as soon as we stepped back onto the stage again, it would just reappear. And it did. All the chemistry came back.”
On the following Saturday, the Rose Parade has returned to Stage 15 with its grand marshal finally in tow. “I got a little rundown,” Barr says. “It’s hard to do a TV show. People think you pull it out of your ass, but man, it’s a lot of work.” A slightly more chipper Barr is sitting on a chair wearing a checked flannel shirt with the show’s name embroidered on the sleeve— a gift from the producers, who seem confident the new Roseanne is here to stay, at least for another season. Barr, however, is not. “I don’t want to jinx it,” she says with a serious look. “I don’t believe in counting your chickens before they are all hatched and boiled and served with carrots.” She’s just grateful for the chance of a do-over. While the legacy of the show remains appropriately intact—the comedy, which aired from 1988 to 1997, remains one of TV’S most revered series thanks to its realistic portrayal of a blue-collar family—barr’s off-screen antics often eclipsed the show’s success. The former stand-up launched into her first fight after seeing the 1988 pilot; she was incensed that writer Matt Williams earned a “created by” credit, something that’s legislated by the Writers Guild. (He was canned by mid-season, though he continues to reap financial rewards from the reruns.) She routinely fought with and overruled her revolving door of writers, whom she’d refer to only by number whenever she wanted to praise—or pick at—a joke. And the bullheaded creative decision, to have the
‘I don’t have nothing to prove. I already proved it’ —Roseanne Barr
Conners win the lottery in season 9 before turning the whole thing into a bizarre fantasy in the now-infamous finale, accelerated the show’s demise. But those days, she claims, are long gone. (After igniting a firestorm of criticism during the holidays when she wrote a series of tweets in support of President Donald Trump, Barr announced that she was retiring from social media for a while.) “I don’t want to fight no more,” Barr tells WHO. “I don’t have nothing to prove. I already proved it. I totally missed the process of collaborating and having my crew and my team and making my vision happen or whatever cornball shit they say. I just want it to be fun and a smooth ride.”
That describes the show’s revival in a nutshell. Last northern spring, Gilbert asked Goodman to do a Roseanne- inspired sketch on her chat show The Talk when he made an appearance to promote Kong: Skull Island. During the interview, she asked Goodman if he’d ever consider a reunion and he immediately said yes.
“A lightbulb went off in my head,” recalls Gilbert. “I just thought maybe people would do it.” After getting the blessing from Barr—as well as Tom Werner and Marcy Carsey, the comedy’s original executive producers—the rest of the cast fell in line, including Johnny Galecki, who returns to play Darlene’s boyfriend-turnedhusband for one episode. Even former show-runner Bruce Helford, whom Barr inexplicably fired during season 5, returned to executive-produce the new iteration along with Werner, Gilbert, Barr, Tony Hernandez and Whitney Cummings.
“I had seen her years before when she gave me a big hug and said, ‘Oh, yeah, I fired you. You are the best writer we ever had. Sorry about that,’ ” remembers Helford.
Once the wheeling and dealing to find a network was out of the way, the writers got busy righting a harebrained wrong, bringing back Dan from the dead after Barr killed him off from a heart attack in the finale. “A lot of the finale was a dream, so that helped us a lot,” explains Helford. “Certain things that happened during the dream don’t exist as part of the actual history of the show.” Other than the absence of Jerry Garcia Conner from season 8 (who is tangentially addressed in the first episode), everything else would remain largely status quo, including the opening title sequence around the
kitchen table and Barr’s high-pitched cackle. (The harmonica is back too.) Roseanne and Dan are in their mid-60s, still working and suffering from the aches and pains of ageing, and struggling to pay for necessities like healthcare. They share their Lanford, Illinois, home with a separated Darlene, her teenage daughter Harris (Emma Kenney), and her son Mark (Ames Mcnamara), a 9-year-old who happens to like dressing up in girls’ clothes. “He’s not a transgender character,” insists Gilbert. “He’s a little boy who’s based on a few kids in my life who dress in more feminine clothing. He’s too young to be gay and he doesn’t identify as transgender.” Living out of the house are D.J.—A former military man with a small child named Mary (Jayden Rey) and a wife stationed overseas—as well as Roseanne and Dan’s eldest child, Becky, who’s now a widow. (Glenn Quinn, who played Becky’s hubby, Mark, during the show’s original run, died in 2002.) Like her parents, Becky is financially strapped, and to make ends meet she has signed on to be a surrogate for a middle-class woman named Andrea—who in a stroke of creative craziness will be played by none other than “Second Becky” herself, Sarah Chalke. “She doesn’t mean to be offensive, but Andrea is coming from an extremely anxiety-ridden place where she wants to have total control over a pregnancy in a way that she can’t,” explains Chalke. “It was really fun to play.”
The delicious cherry on top is the muchanticipated return of Metcalf—now an Oscar nominee for her work as an anxious mum to a precocious teen in Lady Bird— who was always the most lauded of the Roseanne cast, winning three Emmys for her portrayal of Roseanne’s sister. The premiere episode kicks off with Roseanne quarrelling with Jackie—who’s now a life coach—over the recent presidential election. The show’s ongoing commitment to telling topical stories is a huge source of pride for Gilbert, given its rich history of tackling real-world subjects like alcoholism, abortion, domestic violence and gay rights. And yet, believe it or not, “this is our most emotional season yet,” says Gilbert. “That’s what is so moving, because it comes from 30 years of characters. You can’t create that on a new show.”
Back on set, Barr has now moved to the Conner kitchen, where she and her co-stars are marvelling at its historical accuracy. Though some pieces are noticeably missing— like the picture of the dogs playing poker that used to hang by the front door and Barr’s dishes that feature Elvis—everything should look the same to the show’s most ardent fans.
It sure did to the cast. Says Fishman: “It’s pretty amazing because it’s a bit like going through a time warp. There are little things like the arch between the living room and kitchen. For the first five seasons, pretty much every day I would take a running jump and try to touch the archway because I saw John touch it one time. Now I can walk up and touch it anytime I want. Sometimes you wonder when you look back at your childhood if certain things are going to be the way you remember them. But everybody and everything is exactly how I remember, which is exactly what I wanted.”
That’s certainly what the writers are going for. “We want everybody to see something that doesn’t really exist on TV anymore, which is an honest family,” says Helford. “There’s not much of that. Everything is higher-toned or more niche. These people are very much in the core of what’s going on in the country.”
And for Barr—this time, she’s listed as the show’s sole creator. “Being 65, I don’t have any time for bullshit,” she says.
‘Believe it or not, this is our most emotional season’ — Sara Gilbert