The Conners Photos: ABC Shares First Pics Of The Cast On-Set

The singer is Carly Simon, the song is her classic “Anticipation,” and it’s accompanying glimpses of the Conner family’s home, living room, and kitchen, but so far we haven’t seen any footage from the Roseanne spin-off The Conners, only that first photo of the cast gathered together for a table read of the script for the first episode. Well now, ABC has begun to release more photos from the shows themselves, the first batch coming from the season premiere, “Keep on Truckin.”

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#TheConners: Day 1 ✅

A post shared by The Conners (@theconnersabc) on Aug 31, 2018 at 6:59am PDT

The title, of course, comes from the fact that the family is going to have to push forward without actress Roseanne Barr at the heart of it, as, according to John Goodman, her character, Roseanne Conner, will have passed away in between the end of last season’s final episode of the rebooted Roseanne and the Oct. 16 premiere of The Conners. Not that the network is coming right out and saying it, merely describing the premiere as follows: “A sudden turn of events forces the Conners to face the daily struggles of life in Lanford in a way they never have before.”

As usual, we expect that the cast — among them John, Laurie Metcalf, and Sara Gilbert (who doubles as executive producer) — will push forward with the combination of heart and laughs that has always been a hallmark of everything they’ve done together.

Scroll down to check out all the on-set cast photos from The Conners that we’ve seen so far!

Darlene Conner and Jackie Harris

The reported death of the Roseanne character will obviously impact on all of the different characters, but it’s going to be particularly interesting to see how Sara Gilbert’s Darlene and Laurie Metcalf’s Jackie respond. When the Roseanne reboot was first happening, Sara, who serves as executive producer of both shows, noted in approaching the show to Variety, “I really wanted the house to feel a lot like it did before. I felt like there would be little changes in artwork and things like that, but this is a working-class family. I think sometimes people in Hollywood do working class through the lens of people who are privileged. It was very important to me that they were still struggling. We did a lot of research, and it showed that people who were in their income bracket then were actually often making less now, not even factoring in inflation.” Certainly nothing is going to change on that front with The Conners.

A family in crisis…

Like the Conners themselves, the actors bringing them to life have to keep pushing forward. One of them, Emma Kenney, who plays Darlene’s daughter Harris Conner-Healy, noted to Us Weekly, “I think that all of us are very professional. And there’s just so many more stories that need to be told through the Conner family and so many other different aspects of life that we’re going to get to tell, and I’m really excited and grateful for that.”

Becky and Darlene Conner

Appearing at the annual TCA (Television Critics Association) gathering, ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey admitted that beyond The Conners, there was a risk involved in resurrecting Roseanne in the first place. “We had had some conversations, because [Roseanne] had her volatile moments in the first run of the show. 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.”

Dan Conner and Mark Conner-Healy

Also while appearing at the TCA, Dungey said specifically of the new spinoff, “Putting The Conners together happened very smoothly. The actors were excited to be back. From a creative standpoint, I feel very good about it. 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.”