ABC(LONDON) — John Goodman has opened up about this past spring’s abrupt cancellation of his hit Roseanne reboot, telling the Sunday Times that the situation — caused by a racially-charged tweet from his onscreen wife Roseanne Barr — left him “brokenhearted.”
“[B]ut I thought, ‘OK, it’s just show business, I’m going to let it go,'” he recalls thinking at the time. However, he admits, “I went through a period, about a month, where I was very depressed. I’m a depressive anyway, so any excuse that I can get to lower myself, I will. But that had a great deal to do with it, more than I wanted to admit.”
He said of ABC’s quick decision to cancel the show, “I was surprised,” adding, “I’ll put it this way, I was surprised at the response. And that’s probably all I should say about it.”
Goodman described himself and Barr as “work friends,” but steadfastly defended her in one area. “I know, I know, for a fact that she’s not a racist.”
Barr signed over her rights to the show so that she won’t be compensated for the spin-off featuring Goodman and the rest of her sitcom family, titled The Conners.
“I sent her an email and thanked her for that,” Goodman revealed to the paper. “I did not hear anything back, but she was going through hell at the time. And she’s still going through hell.”
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