Sara Gilbert will always be associated with television because that's where she became
a household name.
In addition to her complex and charismatic performance as sarcastic, misunderstood, middle-child
Darlene Conner on ABC's Roseanne, Gilbert has given us memorable turns on The Big Bang
Theory, The Simpsons, and The Talk.
With Roseanne back on the air and earning some of the biggest network TV ratings in
years, Gilbert is back in the intense limelight again, so here's a closer look at her colorful
life.
The Facts of Life
As one of the most notable '80s sitcoms, The Facts of Life aired from 1979 to 1988 and
followed a quartet of girls as they aged from teenagers to young women, graduating college
and running businesses.
In 1988, producers weren't quite ready to let their show go, and used the show's finale
to try-out a potential spinoff.
The plot: one of the girls agrees to take over the school's old setting, essentially
rebooting the show back to its beginnings.
Except this time, it was co-ed, and among the new students were characters played by
future stars Juliette Lewis, Seth Green, and Mayim Bialik.
Gilbert almost made it into the cast - she auditioned for producers a whopping five times.
It's good she didn't get the part.
NBC didn't pick up the all-new Facts of Life, but, had it gone into production, it would
have hit the air in the fall of 1988, the same time as Roseanne, meaning Gilbert would
have missed out on her career-making gig.
Teen accolades
At just 17, Gilbert couldn't legally vote or buy fireworks when she penned the original
story for a fourth-season Roseanne episode called "Don't Make Me Over."
And it's a good episode, too — Darlene and Becky want to treat their mom to a Mother's
Day spa package, but Roseanne finds out that the real reason they arranged it was to attend
a rock concert hundreds of miles away.
But scriptwriting wasn't Gilbert's only feat where her work on Roseanne was concerned.
In 1993, 18-year-old Gilbert earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress
in a Comedy for portraying Darlene, making her one of the youngest acting Emmy nominees
ever.
Real-life smarts
Sure, Sara Gilbert is best known for playing the sharp-witted Darlene Conner on Roseanne,
but it turns out she's just as smart, probably more so, in real life.
According to People, while working as a child actress in the 1980s, Gilbert attended a Los
Angeles-area private school, and got straight A's.
Those marks certainly helped when it came time to apply to college, as Gilbert was accepted
into Yale University.
A testament to her smarts and mental capacity, Gilbert didn't leave Roseanne while she attended
school, where she studied art and photography.
Instead, producers arranged for her to shoot her scenes on a soundstage that was specially
constructed for her in New York.
In 1993, Gilbert told the Los Angeles Times: "Just from a [logistical] standpoint, I was
surprised.
I'm really flattered, and sort of relieved that I'll have the opportunity to do both
things."
Coming out
Gilbert realized that she was attracted to women when she was in her late teens, and
it was when she was dating, and getting physically affectionate with, her on-screen Roseanne
love interest, Johnny Galecki.
"We started dating and he would come over, and we would like, make out, and then I would
start to get depressed."
For his part, Galecki noticed that making out with him made Gilbert sad, and that's
when she thought it was time to tell the truth.
"I eventually told him that I thought it was about my sexuality, and he was super sweet
about it."
The two stayed friends over the nearly two decades since, and when Gilbert decided to
publicly come out in 2010, she asked Galecki for permission to tell her story, as he was
a big part of it.
"And he was like, 'Yeah of course, and you know I love you and I think it's really important,
and I'm so proud of you.'"
It turns out, Galecki was beyond supportive.
Gilbert added: "He said 'You know, if you want, I will be
there and I'll hold your hand.'
And I just thought that was so sweet."
Love for the arts
Gilbert has a type, and that type is remarkable women in the arts.
Gilbert and TV producer Allison Adler were partners for about a decade.
Even if you don't know the name, you're probably still familiar with Adler's work, she's produced
and written episodes for Family Guy, Just Shoot Me, Chuck, and Glee, among other things,
and she created the Supergirl TV series.
The couple had two kids together, but announced their split in 2011, with Gilbert's rep telling
People:
"It's completely amicable."
A few months after their breakup, photographers caught Gilbert holding hands in Hollywood
with Linda Perry, a super-producer who's helped craft the careers of Pink and Christina Aguilera,
but who first found fame in 1993 as the lead singer of 4 Non Blondes.
They got hitched in 2014.
Unseen talent
Roseanne's new episodes may seem like Gilbert's return to primetime after a very long time
away, but she's been a part of many short-lived shows, and some that you never even got to
see.
In 2004, Gilbert was one of many former teen stars in the cast of In the Game, created
by and starring Jennifer Love Hewitt as a sports TV producer thrust into a life as an
on-air ESPN reporter.
ABC planned to use In the Game as a mid-season replacement, but canceled the show without
ever airing it.
In 2005, Gilbert starred on Twins as a nerdy woman running a family business with her Odd
Couple twin, but the show's ratings didn't survive the merger that created the CW.
Shortly after, Gilbert joined an ABC pilot called Girls on the Bus, portraying a news
political reporter, but that never made the fall 2006 schedule.
Gilbert then moved on to a six-episode stint on CBS's short-lived 2007 sitcom The Class
and a long arc in 2010 on the TNT medical drama Hawthorne alongside Jada Pinkett Smith.
In another case, however, a hit show just didn't work out for Gilbert long-term.
Big Bang bust
During the first two seasons of The Big Bang Theory, Gilbert appeared seven times, portraying
Dr. Leslie Winkle, a brilliant experimental physicist, nemesis of Sheldon Cooper, and
love interest for Dr. Leonard Hofstadter, marking a reunion with her Roseanne castmate
Johnny Galecki.
"Sounds fun."
But by January 2009, just five months after an official upgrade to series regular, Gilbert
had practically vanished from the show.
Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello consulted his inside sources and learned that Gilbert
had been knocked back down to "recurring" because the show's producers couldn't think
of anything more to do with Winkle.
By the end of the second season, Winkle had started and ended a relationship with Howard
and then disappeared until a cameo appearance at the end of Season 3 and another special
appearance six years later.
Bathroom inspiration
In 2011, Sara Gilbert was soaking in the bathtub when she got a great idea for a TV series:
a daytime talk show that discussed current events and pop culture happenings from the
perspective of a mother.
She pitched her idea to CBS, and The Talk was born.
In addition to host, Gilbert is also an executive producer on the show, which has featured various
co-hosts including Eve, Sharon Osbourne, Leah Remini, and many others.
Since its debut in 2010, The Talk has taken home the Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Talk
Show three times.
The Talk in Court
In October 2012, Tha Talk hit a bump in the road when author Angela Wilder filed a lawsuit
claiming that the motherhood focused talk show was her idea, not Gilbert's.
Wilder allegedly discussed a show called The Mothers' Hood in a 2009 meeting with Holly
Jacobs, a reality programming executive at Sony.
Jacobs passed, but soon after, Wilder alleged that her ideas were passed along to RelativityReal,
a Talk production company.
"I was left with nothing."
Wilder asked for a full jury trial and sought a huge financial payout, but she didn't get
one.
Less than a year later, the case was dismissed and Gilbert's The Talk continued on as usual.
Reviving Roseanne
In 2014, Gilbert's Roseanne co-stars Michael Fishman, Lecy Goranson, and Roseanne Barr
all showed up on The Talk to celebrate Barr's 62nd birthday.
Then in March 2017, John Goodman was a guest, and the show went all out, re-creating Roseanne's
living room set for a scene in which Gilbert, in character as Darlene, shares a secret with
Goodman, who played her TV dad, Dan Conner.
"God, I don't know how to say this…
I'm a talk show host."
After the audience laughter died down, Goodman replied:
"You know, for a minute there, I thought you were gonna tell me you were gay."
[Laughter]
It all got Gilbert thinking about a full-on Roseanne revival.
Gilbert spearheaded the new Roseanne, serving as an executive producer.
She told Entertainment Weekly:
"It felt like the right time to put this working class family on TV.
That's a voice that's not been spoken for enough in this country and we feel hopefully
that we can be a uniting force in that way."
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