Roseanne Barr was honoured in the last ever episode of Roseanne spin-off The Conners.
The Conners – which was created after Barr was fired from the Roseanne reboot – drew to a close on Wednesday (23 April) after seven seasons.
ABC created the series after cancelling the revival of Roseanne following a racist tweet shared by Barr. The actor played the long-running sitcom’s lead role from 1988 to 1997 before returning for the reboot in March 2018.
However, the show was swiftly axed after Barr, in a now-deleted tweet, described former Barack Obama adviser Valerie Jarett, who is African-American, as a combination of “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes [sic].” She later blamed her tweets on the sleep medicine Ambien.
The Conners was created in its place, and saw original Roseanne cast members John Goodman, Laurie Metcalf and Sara Gilbert return. Barr, whose character was killed off, had zero creative or financial participation, with the show’s producer revealing that she agreed to a settlement in a bid to prevent 300 cast and crew members from losing their jobs.
Throughout the final season ofThe Conners, Barr’s character is referenced – and in the final episode, the show’s central characters are shown visiting the character’s grave to honour the character.
The show’s executive producers have now addressed their decision to make the memory of Roseanne a key part of the ending.
“We never shied away from that,” Bruce Helford told Deadline. “The family loved their matriarch. For the finale, we felt it was right to honour the character and honour Roseanne herself, who birthed the show. It was important to make that part of the end.”
In the final scene, Goodman’s patriarch Dan Conner sat on the sofa while reflecting on his memories. at which point a montage sequence of the original sitcom played on screen.
However, clips of Barr herself were omitted from this moment, with Helford’s co-executive producer Dave Caplan revealing this was “contractual”.
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“She was very gracious in allowing us to continue the show because she had a say in that,” Helford added. “When she realised it would be putting 300 people out of work when the initial reboot was cancelled, she gracefully allowed us to continue without her. It really was about these people.
“This show was really about the lives of these other people in the family, the Conners, and we wanted to focus on them.”
Barr previously said of the decision to kill off her character from an opioid overdose: “While we wish the very best for the cast and production crew of The Conners, all of whom are deeply dedicated to their craft and were Roseanne’s cherished colleagues, we regret that ABC chose to cancel Roseanne by killing off the Roseanne Conner character.
“That it was done through an opioid overdose lent an unnecessary grim and morbid dimension to an otherwise happy family show.
