From a messy behind-the-scenes romance to a Twitter tirade that sank the entire show,
the making of Roseanne was just as chaotic as the lives of its on-screen characters.
Getting Roseanne to the small screen wasn't easy.
In the 1980s, television producers Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner wanted to make a series about
a working mother.
They commissioned a script from writer Matt Williams, and thought that Roseanne Barr's
"domestic goddess" persona would be a perfect fit.
But Barr and Williams were combative from the start.
Vanity Fair reported that Williams wanted to call it Life and Stuff to keep Barr from
having too much control, but Barr wanted to simply call it Roseanne.
Barr got her title, but it was just the first in a series of battles between the star and
the writer.
"You know what would be really good for breakfast?"
"What?"
"Pie."
"Tell him no."
"No."
While Williams is credited as the sole creator of Roseanne, Barr reportedly wanted credit
since she felt the show was based on her life.
Williams, Carsey, and Werner claimed it was actually a matter with the Writers Guild of America.
Mere weeks into production, Barr wanted Williams fired and threatened to leave the show.
Williams did bow out, but not before taking a large financial settlement for his efforts.
There was never any doubt that John Goodman would play Dan Conner on Roseanne.
Before being cast, Goodman had a series of small roles in classic '80s films like Revenge
of the Nerds and Raising Arizona, but he was hardly a star.
Werner claimed that they were looking for an actor who could match Barr's charisma,
and Goodman nailed his screen test.
However, while ABC wanted Roseanne to move quickly into production, Goodman had a scheduling conflict.
But Werner and Casey were so confident of his talents that they forfeited a coveted
time slot in order to keep Goodman in the role.
"One kid down, two to go, Darlene."
In a career retrospective for Vanity Fair, Goodman recalled how he liked the script and
immediately hit it off with Barr.
Goodman left his audition knowing he had the job, something that rarely happened to him.
He found job security in the role of Dan Conner, playing the character for years — not only
in Roseanne, but also its popular spin-off series, The Conners.
Barr and Tom Arnold were longtime friends on the stand-up comedy circuit before they
fell in love while taping Roseanne's 1987 HBO comedy special, The Roseanne Barr Show.
While Barr was married and Arnold was in a relationship, they soon were inseparable.
Arnold became, and was subsequently fired, from his gig as Roseanne's warm-up comedian,
but he was eventually hired on the show's writing staff after Barr's insistence.
The pair married in 1990.
In addition to playing the character Arnie Thomas, Arnold ascended to executive producer
on Roseanne, and essentially took control of Barr's career, leading Barr to fire most
of her team.
At the time of their marriage, a source told Vanity Fair,
"Roseanne is oblivious to everything but Tom Arnold."
The couple brought their outlandish behavior to the set of Roseanne, even igniting rumors
that they were engaged in a three-way relationship with their assistant-turned-executive Kim Silva.
Soon after — in 1994 — Barr and Arnold's marriage ended, and so did Arnold's time on Roseanne.
Barr fired Arnold and Silva, and reportedly changed the locks on their production office.
Roseanne wasn't the only TV collaboration between Barr and Arnold.
The pair produced multiple short-lived sitcoms, including The Jackie Thomas Show and Tom.
In 1992, while Roseanne was the number one show on television, The Jackie Thomas Show
was designed to be a vehicle for Arnold, making its debut that December.
According to The New York Times, ABC was concerned about putting the poorly tested show in the
coveted and highly lucrative time slot directly after Roseanne.
The show had promising debut ratings, but its decline in viewership left ABC hesitant
to renew it for another season.
That's when things got ugly.
"What happened?
Well, I'll tell you what happened, the big monkey ate the little monkey."
In 1993, Barr reportedly threatened to take Roseanne to another network in retaliation
for what she perceived to be disrespect over The Jackie Thomas Show, all the while sending
scathing faxes to negative critics.
While Arnold told the press that Jackie Thomas was picked up for a second season, it was
only a tactic to bully ABC into renewing the show.
Ultimately, Arnold left Jackie Thomas to develop the sitcom Tom for CBS.
But this new sitcom only had a short run in 1994 before being canceled.
The Roseanne chicken shirt has become one of television's most recognized pieces of
anti-fashion.
Barr wrote for Vulture that she clashed with the wardrobe department early in the show's
production, so she ended up wearing her own clothes on the set.
After this dispute, Roseanne's wardrobe department apparently developed a sense of humor.
They introduced the chicken shirt — first worn by Lecy Goranson's Becky — as a joke
in Season 2.
But once Barr saw the design, its ugliness became something of an artistic statement.
The shirt went on to play heavily in Season 5's finale episode "Daughters and Other Strangers."
It rotated among cast members, with numerous actors sporting the garment during the episode.
The chicken shirt would live on as Roseanne's apron design at her restaurant, the Lanford
Lunch Box.
It also appears during Season 10's opening credits.
Called "incalculably ill-judged" by the Rotten Tomatoes Critics Consensus, "strange, scattered,
and self-conscious" by Vulture, and one of the worst series finales of all-time by Variety,
Season 9 of Roseanne left longtime fans confused and even alienated.
When Season 9 was announced, The New York Times reported that both Barr and ABC decided
it would be the show's last.
Breaking from the show's working-class family strife, the final season saw the Conners win
$108 million in the lottery.
The season bounced between wish-fulfillment stories and self-referential television parodies,
with John Goodman's Dan Conner notably absent from most of the season's episodes.
This was due to Goodman walking away from Roseanne because he was reportedly fed up
with the on-set drama.
The Roseanne finale, when the entire lottery premise is revealed to be Roseanne's fantasy
after Dan had passed away, remains controversial to this day.
"Yeah and I got you some notepads.
"And I got you a dictionary and a thesaurus."
"You know, Stephen King started this way."
Even though Season 9 was billed as the show's swan song, there were talks of a Roseanne
spin-off series.
The Los Angeles Times claimed the show would have seen Roseanne and Michael Fishman's D.J.
moving to Las Vegas.
With ABC balking at the show's high price, the idea didn't stick.
An unlikely meeting of comedy divas happened during Season 9's Halloween episode "Satan,
Darling," when Roseanne crossed over with the UK comedy sensation Absolutely Fabulous.
In the episode, newly minted millionaire Roseanne and her sister Jackie attended a party in
New York City, where she meets London fashion mavens Patsy and Edina — played by Joanna
Lumley and Jennifer Saunders, respectively.
The foursome drink excessively and the episode transitions into a parody of the 1968 horror
film Rosemary's Baby.
Roseanne's connection to Absolutely Fabulous is not entirely inorganic.
In 1995, The New York Times reported that Barr purchased the rights to produce an American
version of the BBC series.
The project was a hot commodity in Hollywood, but AbFab never got off the ground.
Instead, Barr and Saunders collaborated on "Satan, Darling," with Saunders later recounting,
"It was very bizarre.
We were quite confused.
But it was fun."
While Barr is revered as a trailblazing female talent bucking the system of Hollywood, she's
also known for being a difficult boss.
Barr admitted to ABC News that she made a list of people whom she'd fire when the show
reached number one in the ratings, and she eventually followed through.
Roseanne writer and executive producer Bruce Helford was warned by his agent and lawyer
that Barr fires everyone after one year.
Sure enough, he was eventually canned.
Even future television powerhouse Chuck Lorre was the focus of Barr's ire.
He told the Television Academy that he was almost fired because she hated his first script.
Writers on Roseanne recalled to EW how Barr dehumanized them by referring to them by numbers
instead of names.
Barr, on the other hand, claimed that the practice stripped the writers of their self-entitlement
and that they learned something from the practice.
While some writers clashed with her abrasive management, Barr credits herself for championing
female writers and giving then-unknown talents like Joss Whedon and Judd Apatow their first
writing gigs.
Lecy Goranson and Sarah Chalke both played the Conners' eldest daughter, Becky.
Goranson originated the character, playing her for the show's first five seasons.
However, the role was recast when Goranson decided to attend college.
According to EW, after testing hundreds of actors for the role, Chalke was cast.
While Chalke was around for part of Season 6 and all of Season 7, Goranson was able to
mix her higher education pursuits with her sitcom stardom.
She returned to Roseanne for parts of Season 8, sharing the role with Chalke.
Though Chalke was the show's sole Becky for Season 9.
The humor of having two actors play the same character — sometimes in the same season
— was not lost on Roseanne.
The show included self-aware jokes about Goranson and Chalke playing the same role, including
a parody of The Patty Duke Show theme song in Season 8.
When Roseanne returned for Season 10 in 2018, both Goranson and Chalke came back to the show.
A new role was created for Chalke and, for the first time, both actors shared the screen.
Before Roseanne, Halloween-themed network television episodes were few and far between.
The show arguably contributed to the invention of dedicated spooky season episodes.
Roseanne Barr told Yahoo! Entertainment that ABC initially resisted making Roseanne Halloween
episodes — fearing it would alienate part of their audience.
However, Barr argued that Halloween was popular, and after she won the debate, she called the
victory, quote, "the first dragon we slayed on the Roseanne show."
With the network greenlighting the concept, the beloved tradition was born in Season 2's
episode "BOO!," where the Conners stage a haunted house for trick-or-treaters.
"This is the only way out.
Follow me into the enchanted garage."
In every subsequent season, the show pulled out all the stops to celebrate Halloween.
Elaborate costumes, hilarious pranks, and frightful antics had viewers tuning in to
see who could out-scare whom.
Goodman reportedly joked that the Conners were poor because they spent all their money
on Halloween.
Even if the Conners went broke celebrating the season, the amount of fun they had was priceless.
Roseanne Barr wrote for Vulture that, when developing the show, she needed Roseanne to
not just be funny, but also about the struggle to survive, and breaking taboos.
The show aired episodes on domestic violence, racism, teen sex, and drugs; but not without resistance.
Barr fought with network censors over several issues, including episodes about menstruation
and same-sex kissing.
The Season 1 episode "Nightmare on Oak Street" made headlines for its groundbreaking depiction
of Sara Gilbert's Darlene experiencing her first period.
Barr later told Oprah that the episode met with resistance from ABC, saying,
"It was hard because that had never been on television."
Later in the show's run, ABC alleged that the Season 6 episode "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"
— which featured a kiss between Roseanne and Mariel Hemingway's Sharon at a gay bar
— violated network standards and refused to air the episode.
After Barr's demand that the episode be shown, it was eventually released, reportedly garnering
nearly 20 million viewers.
During its heyday, Roseanne was one of the most popular television shows in America,
so it might come as a surprise that it was virtually snubbed by TV's most prestigious award.
The show was a consistent hit for ABC and was recognized by The New York Times in 1994
as "the most watched entertainment show in television over the past five years."
Despite its popularity, Roseanne wasn't nominated for a single Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy
Series during its 10-season run.
"Mom used to yell at us in the shower.
It was like that scene in Psycho.
Take out the trash!"
Roseanne Barr lamented her initial lack of Emmy recognition to the Los Angeles Times
and claimed it was likely retribution for on-set controversies.
Barr eventually won an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 1993, with
Goodman and Laurie Metcalf receiving multiple Emmys for their work on the series.
While Roseanne certainly earned its acting accolades, it can be baffling that the show
itself was never recognized in its totality.
In 2017, the news broke that most of Roseanne's original cast would reprise their roles for
a limited series revival on ABC.
Even as the excitement mounted, there was the problem of how to address the continuation
of the series after its Season 9 finale.
Well, it's television after all, and Roseanne chose to simply ignore most of Season 9's finale.
In Season 10's opener, Dan is still alive and other questions — like who exactly Darlene
and Becky married — were left unanswered.
The first episode of the Roseanne revival pulled in over 18 million viewers, the highest
network comedy ratings in years.
In fact, Roseanne was 2018's most-watched series in total viewers.
Despite its popularity, the celebration was short-lived when ABC canceled the series after
Barr posted racist comments on Twitter.
ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey stated,
"Roseanne's Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values,
and we have decided to cancel her show."
Roseanne was a serious incubator for up-and-coming Hollywood talent, with many members of the
show becoming some of entertainment's most powerful players.
Amy Sherman-Palladino — creator of Gilmore Girls and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel — super
producer Chuck Lorre, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer mastermind Joss Whedon were all in
the writer's room.
Judd Apatow shared on Tell Me More with Kelly Corrigan that supporting Barr with her joke
writing was his first big job, and even Norm Macdonald penned several Roseanne episodes
before his achieving stardom on Saturday Night Live.
"You know, the old man was almost a state champ back in high school."
"Were you ever in a cage match?"
"Only with your mom."
Although some might have forgotten George Clooney on Roseanne, he played Jackie's love
interest Booker Brooks in the show's first season.
Before Clooney became an Oscar-winning movie star and filmmaker, he was just a working
guy sporting a pencil behind his ear.
While audiences became acquainted with Johnny Galecki as David on Roseanne, he eventually
catapulted into global fame on The Big Bang Theory.
Sara Gilbert parlayed her role as Darlene into a successful producing career, co-creating
the CBS chat show The Talk.
She also initiated and executive produced the Roseanne revival.