'Roseanne' Cast Speaks Out About Series Cancellation
by EG
When ABC decided to cancel the revival of Roseanne after a controversial tweet by Roseanne Barr, the rest of the show's cast was caught off guard. Now they're speaking out about the experience. Read on for details.
Via People.
Sara Gilbert, John Goodman and Laurie Metcalf are still very much a family.
It’s been four months since the revival of their hit show Roseanne was canceled by ABC in May after their costar Roseanne Barr tweeted a racist comment about a former White House adviser. Now, the stars are opening up about the controversy and how they’re grateful the aftermath led to a spin-off series, The Conners.
“There was the feeling of not wanting it to go away until we were ready,” Goodman, 66, tells PEOPLE exclusively in this week’s cover story. “There was a debt owed to this fictional family. We want to finish telling this story.”
The actor recalls first hearing of the tweet “in my kitchen and maybe my daughter or my wife told me,” he says. “It just didn’t seem true. Then it got true. I was consciously trying to accept it.”
For Gilbert, 43, it was more about compartmentalizing the news. “I don’t remember too much,” she recalls. “It was more just, ‘Okay, what are we dealing with today?’ I was just kind of taking things one step at a time as they came.”
Metcalf, who was in New York City performing on Broadway, remembers finding out “on the news, actually,” she says. “And I [first] thought, ‘Oh, I wonder if we still have a show.’ Because of how heavy everything became.”
In the weeks following the cancellation, each of them struggled to find acceptance. Goodman held on to “the hope of resurrecting it,” he says. “It was so unbelievable to do this show and it was like easy come, easy go.”
Metcalf, 63, was just trying “to reconcile myself to the show being gone,” she adds. “And you know, coming off such a high, it was hard to wrap our heads around.”
When the idea of a spin-off was first broached, the cast was hesitant yet hopeful. “There was a lot of risk involved,” says Metcalf. “But we all decided as a group to take the risk, knowing that we could be judged by deciding to come back.”
Get the rest of the story at People.
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