John Goodman Admits He 'Crashed' After Roseanne Was Kicked from Show
As he watched his longtime co-star’s career destruct in the wake of an offensive tweet earlier this year, John Goodman said his own life started to crumble.
The actor, who starred opposite Roseanne Barr in the ABC series “Roseanne” and its recent short-lived revival, discussed the tumultuous period in an interview on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” this week.
He began by joking about Barr’s high-profile ouster from her own show, which has been retooled without her for a series called “The Conners.”
“The end of last season, she goes out to the liquor store to fill her vape pen and she hasn’t been back yet,” Goodman said.
He soon became more serious when he discussed the toll her departure took on the cast and crew so soon after the long-awaited reboot came back to the network.
“She is missed, definitely,” he said. “But after that many years it’s like a family. And after last year, it was so miraculous and so unreal that it went away; it was almost like a dream.”
Goodman initially believed he would be able to weather the disruption, but soon saw the impact of the situation — along with several other unfortunate events — on his life.
“I thought, I’ll be a big boy and handle this, and I just crashed for a couple of weeks,” he said.
He told Kimmel that “all kinds of weird stuff happened” to him in the days and weeks that followed the backlash to his co-star’s tweet.
“My wife got sick right after that and I fell down the stairs,” Goodman said.
Things have since been on the upswing, including an opportunity to continue working with the cast and crew he loves — with one notable exception.
“She gave up a lot so that people could work,” Goodman said of Barr, who reached a deal with ABC allowing the network to continue using her character.
To fans of the original show, he said they could expect to find the “same family, minus mom” in the new series.
“It was very weird doing the first show without her, because she’s my buddy,” he said. “I mean, we just sit there and she’d make me laugh and I’d make her laugh, which is always fun because there’s always a danger of her peeing herself.”
Goodman remained predictably coy when discussing the manner in which his on-screen wife is written out of the show.
“You have to wait until next week, Jimmy,” he said when asked.
His maintained a sense of gratitude toward his former co-star, who recently suggested her character would be written out of the script in a fatal drug overdose.
“She gave up a lot for us to be able to do this show,” Goodman said. “I can’t thank her enough.”
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