On Tuesday, Roseanne was promptly canceled by ABC after Roseanne Barr posted a racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett, a former top aide to President Barack Obama. The fallout for Barr was swift, with her agents dropping her and her former co-stars condemning her remarks.
For most of the cast and crew, the news of the cancellation came as a shock. The writers had just returned after a brief hiatus to start working on 13 new episodes for season two of the revival, which was scheduled to begin filming in August.
“We got together as a group for the first time and there was a lot of bittersweet hellos — and a couple hours later, a lot of very difficult goodbyes,” executive producer David Caplan recalled to The Hollywood Reporter about learning of the cancellation.
The sudden cancellation also casts a dark shadow on what may have been a celebratory awards season, kicking off with the 2018 Primetime Emmys. The show, after a record-breaking premiere, was quickly renewed for a second season and earning early Emmy buzz for the show and its many stars, including John Goodman, Laurie Metcalf and Sara Gilbert, who spearheaded the revival and was an executive producer on season 10.
Earlier this month, before the change-ups behind the scenes and subsequent cancellation, we spoke with Gilbert for ET’s third annual Standout Performances on TV, celebrating the best of the past season, about the attention surrounding the revival. (Both Gilbert and Laurie Metcalf will be featured for their respective work on Roseanne.)
“We just set out to make a great show, so when you hear people talk about Emmys or accolades, you just feel so grateful and flattered that they are watching and responding to it,” Gilbert told ET at the time, adding: “I think you can never count on anything, so it’s very flattering to me. It seems like this kind of dream.”
But now that ABC has suspended its For Your Consideration campaign, many are speculating that Roseanne — which was predicted to land its first-ever Best Comedy nomination in its 10-season history — may now largely be ignored by the Television Academy when ballots open for nominations on June 11.
In recent footage obtained by ET, Goodman, who was reluctant to talk about the cancellation, did remark about his chances for a nomination. “I wasn’t gonna get an Emmy anyway,” he said with a shrug. “I’ve been up there [11] times already, and if I didn’t get one, I’m not gonna get one.”
During his time on the show, Goodman was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series seven times, with four other nominations for work on other TV films or series. He has won one time for Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which coincidentally was also canceled before nomination voting began in 2011.
Despite reservations about Barr and her personal politics, the Academy could still rally around the rest of the cast, like Gilbert, Goodman and Metcalf, who has won three Emmys for playing Jackie and is coming off an Oscar nomination for Lady Bird and a Tony nomination for Three Tall Women.
“I would hope Roseanne’s hateful tweets don’t indelibly color the work that was done on the show because a lot of talented people worked really hard to make an emotionally honest show and we’d hate for that to be tarnished by all of this,” Caplan said in the same interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
–Additional reporting by Emily Krauser.
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