30 Years of ‘Roseanne’ — What Really Went on Behind the Scenes of the Show

Roseanne’s stand-up act inspired the series.

Gabe Kaplan may have been there before her with Welcome Back, Kotter, but Roseanne was the first of the stand-up comics to have her act transformed into a mega-successful series. In 1985, producers Tom Werner and Marcy Carsey watched her “domestic goddess” routine on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and approached her about a possible series. Needless to say, it worked, and she would be followed by other comedians like Jerry Seinfeld with Seinfeld, Tim Allen with Home Improvement, Brett Butler with Grace Under Fire, and Ray Romano with Everybody Loves Raymond.

The show originally had a different title.

Matt Williams, who is credited as the show’s creator (though he did leave following the first season) believed that the series should be called Life and Stuff. Roseanne, of course, didn’t agree, believing that it should be named after her and based on the fact that the scripts were coming out of her own life experiences. It wasn't their only fight.

There was a need to surround Roseanne with established actors.

When you watch the early episodes, Roseanne’s inexperience as an actress shows through — she always looks like she’s smiling when delivering her lines. Obviously, she quickly evolved as a performer, but at the start, the producers brought in Laurie Metcalf as Jackie and John Goodman as Dan to provide support.

The battles between Roseanne and her writers were legendary.

Roseanne was in charge and she made sure that everybody knew it, with writers and executive producers quickly falling to the wayside if she wasn’t happy. And in Season 1 she really wasn’t happy with the fact that the show’s created by credit went to Matt Williams with absolutely no mention of her name. As she proclaimed to EW, "I stood up at the screening party. ‘What are you… thinking? We built the show around my actual life and kids. The ‘domestic goddess,’ the whole thing.’… That’s when I said, ‘You better get rid of that guy or I’m leaving!’ Oh, we almost killed each other. He’s never apologized to me. I was the writer. It wasn’t that it was based off my life — it’s that I wrote it. I created it. I thought it up. I lived it. That's why I hate everybody.”

In the same piece, Matt replied, “This desperate and angry cry that ‘I created everything,’ well, it’s not true. I did write it. Did I pick her brain and talk to her and watch her stand-up a thousand times? Absolutely. The Writers Guild of America determines [the credit].” Executive producer Marcy Carsey noted that Matt’s script was about a working-class heroine in that the character of Roseanne who, despite the incredible odds against her, had a healthy marriage and was raising a trio of kids while working. “So,” she said, “it was the opposite of things she was talking about in ‘The Domestic Goddess.’”

It should be noted, that the behind-the-scenes drama with the writers was something that plagued the show for much of its run, and the issues had nothing to do with the cast.

Roseanne got a not so interesting reward for the show topping the ratings.

Roseanne hit number one in the ratings, and Roseanne Barr, in a show of network appreciation, received a chocolate cake in the shape of a numeral one. She was, shall we say, underwhelmed by their appreciation, particularly when she learned that other show creators were given things like sports cars when their shows scored. According to Roseanne, when Disney and executive Bob Iger took over, the quality of gifts rose substantially.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon was story editor on Season 2.

Prior to creating the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series — or even writing the movie the show was based on — Joss Whedon joined the writing staff of Roseanne as story editor. It was not the experience he hoped it would be, as he related to us. “I liked the speed at which you had to turn the stuff out,” he says. “It teaches you a good discipline. I would never have written anything if I hadn’t spent a couple of years on TV. We actually got so behind at one point that the plot of the next episode was listed in TV Guide before we’d written it. It all depends on the show. In TV it’s all about the process. If you’re turning out a quality show where it’s consistently good, then you do have to go through hell, but there are certain times when it becomes only about the process. Then it’s about this guy’s power and this guy’s vanity and all of a sudden all you’re turning out is work. Towards the end of the year I was on Roseanne that started to happen, which is why I quit. There were a lot of different factors, but basically the show started to suffer and it was all about, ‘Who’s angry at whom?’ and none of it was about, ‘What’s happening this week on Roseanne?’”

The Conners had to go to Disney World.

Back in the 1970s when Universal opened its theme park in California, virtually every TV show produced by the studio had its characters make their way through it to promote the attractions. Well, when Disney purchased ABC in 1995, the corporate edict was that all the sitcoms should come up with plots that somehow worked their characters into Disney World. Shows to do so included Full House, Boy Meets World, Family Matters, Step by Step, and Roseanne — with the Connors visiting the happiest place on Earth twice.

There may have been another reason that Lecy Goranson left the show.

As is well known, the original Becky Conner, Lecy Goranson, left Roseanne at the end of Season 4 to be replaced by Sarah Chalke (and the two of them eventually became a pretty funny running joke on the series). The official reason given is that the actress was taking a break from acting to study at Vassar College. But, later, when Roseanne appeared on Howard Stern’s morning show, she was asked if the real reason Lecy left was because of sexual harassment from one of the show’s producers. You can hear Roseanne caught by surprise with that one, asking, “Where did you hear that?”, and then she abruptly started talking about something else. Obviously no confirmation, but not a denial either.

The actors playing the Conner kids came out okay.

Young actors frequently have a difficult time adjusting to normal life after a hit series ends, but the young cast members of Roseanne seemed to have come out of it okay. As Michael Fishman detailed to Fox News, “The big part of it is the choices you make and the responsibility you take as an individual, and we were lucky. I think we worked with really supportive people and we had families that were very supportive and very normal and we really adapted to. We never looked at is as we were stars, we looked at it as this is a job that we take a lot of pride in.” Added Lacy, “It’s a job, and then it’s you, and I think what happens is that people don’t feel that they have value outside of that. You know, what if that went away? Then what? Then who am I? Do I still matter? And I think that’s a real question. I don’t belittle people that struggle with that, because that’s a real thing.”

There were many famous faces on Roseanne.

Among the stars that graced the Roseanne soundstage — many in recurring roles — was George Clooney (he was so young), Shelley Winters, Martin Mull, Sandra Bernhard, Debbie Reynolds, Morgan Fairchild, Fred Willard, Bill Maher, Steven Segal, Hugh Hefner, Wayne Newton, Don King, and Florence Henderson (Carol Brady from The Brady Bunch).

Classic TV moms made an appearance on the series.

Roseanne truly does love Classic TV, particularly all of those sitcoms that she grew up watching. In one episode a bunch of the moms from those shows showed up: Barbara Billingsley (June Cleaver from Leave It to Beaver), Pat Crowley (Joan Nash from Please Don’t Eat the Daisies), June Lockhart (Ruth Martin from Lassie), Alley Mills (Norma Arnold from The Wonder Years), and Isabel Sanford (Louise Jefferson from The Jeffersons).

The Conners not only visited Gilligan's Island, they became the characters.

Roseanne Barr's love for Classic TV continues with a tribute to writer/producer Sherwood Schwartz. When Dan works toward finishing the building of a boat in the garage, Roseanne, who is terrified of it, imagines that they’re going to be shipwrecked on a deserted island and become the characters from Gilligan’s Island. Johnny Galecki’s David is the only character that steps in and out of both series.

Tom Arnold became a part of Roseanne's life and the show — it wasn't a good mix.

Writer/comedian Tom Arnold fell in love with Roseanne and they were married in 1990. As a result, he became a driving force on the writing staff (determined to protect her) and a recurring character on the show in the form of Arnie Thomas. In real life, they were headline magnets and definitely seemed on a road of self-destruction (they divorced in 1994). A, uh, highlight of their time together came on July 25, 1990 when she sang the National Anthem at San Diego’s Jack Murphy Stadium. A worse shriek-show you could not imagine, and as she was booed. Roseanne played snottily to the crowd and the two took major heat as a result. They thought it was hysterical, nobody else felt the same.

The final season was a disappointment to pretty much everyone.

The appeal of Roseanne from the beginning was the fact that it truly represented Middle America in the form of a family who struggled to get by and managed to keep themselves relatively intact along the way. In the final season, the Conners won the lottery (taking home $108 million) and the show dealt with the impact of that money on them. On the surface, this seemed like a great opportunity to do a modern version of the ‘60s sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies, where, after striking oil and getting rich, the Clampett family of hillbillies move to California. The humor was built with their values set against their new neighbors. Roseanne should have been able to do the same thing, but, instead, the storylines just became weird. Jackie dated a prince, there were constant fantasy sequences… it was as though Roseanne had told the writers, “Anything goes.” And maybe it did.

Some of that may have had to do with the fact that she had acquired the British series Absolutely Fabulous (AbFab), which, as described by Google, “features Edina and Patsy, two hard-drinking, drug-taking, completely and outrageously selfish middle-aged women. Their cruel humor focuses on the hypocrisy of today’s society.” Sounds like it’s right up Roseanne’s alley, right? But she couldn’t sell an American version, so word is that she incorporated as many elements as possible into the final season of the show.

Sara Gilbert had a lot more to do with the revival than anyone might think.

When John Goodman appeared on Sara's talk show The Talk, the two of them did a skit that was a reunion between Dan and Darlene. The seed for the revival may have been planted there. John was definitely interested (despite Dan's off-camera death in the original — it's explained in the first scene of the new show), and when Sara approached Roseanne she said she would be, too, as long as she didn't have to be aggravated. At that moment Sara became an executive producer and helped bring the various pieces together, living up to her word in the process and not causing any aggravation to Roseanne. Well done, Sara!

The death of Glenn Quinn will be dealt with on the show.

Actor Glenn Quinn, who played Becky’s husband, Mark Healy, on Roseanne, sadly died on Dec. 3, 2002 of a heroin overdose. His death will be dealt with in some manner on the show, possibly as him having enlisted for combat and dying in Afghanistan. After the original series, the role that he was most acclaimed for was as the human-demon hybrid Doyle on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spin-off, Angel. He was with the show for much of the first season, but, because of his escalating drug problems, was let go from the series. Actress Charisma Carpenter, who worked with him on Angel, reflects in an exclusive interview, “When I found out he died, I must have fallen to my knees. It was so painful, because you see someone trying to figure it out a little bit and think it’s going to be OK, and then it just hits you sideways. It makes no sense.” One presumes that the writers of Roseanne will attempt to make some sense of it in terms of Mark’s death.

Roseanne and John Goodman are thrilled with the opportunity to do the revival.

In an excerpt from their interview with AARP, as released by PRNewswire, there’s something reassuring to both John and Roseanne about coming back for the revival of the series. “It’s harder, because I’m older,” he says. “Daddy gets tired. Daddy gets a headache and can’t remember his lines sometimes. I thought for some reason I was an expert on humor when I was younger. I don’t have to work so hard to be funny now.” To which Roseanne adds, “Every day, I pinch myself and wonder, ‘Is this the most fun in the world or the onset of dementia?’”

The Conners are Trump supporters in the revival for a very specific reason.

Politics were always a part of Roseanne, even if it was subtle (occasionally), but what may surprise people — and in reality shouldn’t — is that the Conners are very much supporters of President Trump. Speaking to ABC News, Roseanne said of the show’s creation, “I always wanted to do a show that was complementary to the viewers, who I felt were me when I was a little girl watching TV. In my culture, it was always a strong mother-based home with a loving husband and some problems and loud-mouthed kids. So I wanted that. And of course, we faced money issues.” That was then, and while the world has changed a lot since the series premiered, the Conners at their core haven’t.

On stage at the TCA, she explained that Roseanne and Dan will support the president, because she wants the show to continue to be a reflection of the society we live in. “So I feel like half the people voted for Trump and half didn’t, so it’s just realistic,” she explains. “I’ve always attempted to portray a realistic portrait of the American people and the working class people. And, in fact, it was working class people who elected Trump. So I felt like, yeah, that was very real, and something that needed to be discussed. I wanted to focus on polarization in the family, and people actually hating other people for the way they voted, which doesn’t feel American. So I wanted to bring it right down the middle and we did.”

Laurie clarified this a bit with Uproxx, explaining that the current presidency has an impact on the family. “The rift that it has caused between the sisters, as it has in other families, goes even deeper than how they voted. It makes [the sisters] go way down and see where their weird power struggle has always been. The voting highlighted these other deeper problems that have always been there.”

So, as usual, the conflicts are born out of character, which is reassuring.

According to Roseanne, the nine episodes of the revival could be it for the Connors.

Back in January when she took to the stage at the Television Critics Association (TCA) gathering, Roseanne seemed to suggest that this 10th season of the show was an opportunity she wanted to tie things up in a bow. “In the original series,” she said, “I always wanted to have the tenth year so I could do exactly what I did in these nine episodes, which was to finish and complete the story of this family. So I always had that in my head that that was how it would go, and so I’m very happy we got a tenth season and we got to do that.” Is it us, or is that not really an indication that things will go further? No doubt ratings for the revival will tell.